


porcelain, ivory, steel

by orphan_account



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, M/M, this is probably never going to be finished fyi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-23
Updated: 2014-04-23
Packaged: 2018-01-20 12:19:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 38,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1510196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>One day, I'll tell you I love you,</i> he promises, although it's dumb and dangerous and thank God he's gotten better at controlling his expressions. <i>Aloud. No note, no touch. Words you and the cameras can hear, and to hell with the city</i> -- every thought these days is dangerous -- <i>I'll fight them or run away or something, anything, because you haven't heard the three forbidden words from someone who loves you so much they could die for you, and I am your soulmate</i> -- dangerous, beautiful -- <i>and I love you.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	porcelain, ivory, steel

The bakery is warm and inviting, and Kurt accepts its open, steamy arms as refuge from the winter biting at his ears and wrists. Inside is crowded with people made gray with city slush and wear. Kurt joins the queue, huffing lukewarm breath onto his chapped fingertips, and tries his best not to bump anyone. Icy days run tempers thin, and he doesn't think he can take being snapped at by a stranger on top of the rest of the day's stress. His ears still ring with the harsh reprimands of his boss (and pretty much everyone else at the law firm, it seems). With any luck, something warm and doubtlessly overpriced will soothe his mind, if not his wallet.

He fishes in his jacket pocket for coins as the line shuffles forward. There's a man about his own age working the counter, he notices, and something in his gaze stills Kurt's fingers and leaves him staring. Though obviously young, there is weariness evident in his face, same as nearly all of the city's inhabitants; Kurt sees faint lines and premature threads of gray in his own reflection. But this man hasn't let his appearance fall to pieces the way so many of the people around Kurt have. His hair is gelled; he's clean-shaven; his eyes are bright -- and he smiles. He smiles at each and every customer as he drops their money into the register or hands them their baked goods. He even exchanges a simple greeting with those who are receptive to conversation and lets the ones who aren't retain their silence. And...

 _No, Hummel, that's a dangerous thought._ Kurt swallows it effectively and digs until he finds enough change for at least a couple of buns. Something to tide him over until his typical dinner of bland soup and hard bread. The line shortens again, and he finds himself steps closer to his strangely content man, presenting a neatly boxed cake to a stone-faced customer with that same gentle smile.

And then he's there, belly to the counter, and his senses are swamped with warmth and freshness and yeast and sugar and all things good and delectable, and suddenly he can't think of anything but the way his grimy, worn-out jacket is smudging the glass. "Sorry," he breathes, backing away and wincing as the woman behind him lets out an irritated grunt. "I --" He folds his fingers firmly around the coins and scrambles to calculate the most he can buy without ruining the rest of his week. "Three wheat buns, please," he says, opening his hand, offering.

The man behind the counter looks at Kurt with eyes as rich and dark as the chocolate pies on display. His lips part, an airless half-gasp: the recognition of a stranger, the sensation of bumping souls with someone who has been through what you have and wears the same scars on their face. Kurt feels it too, surprising, trembling, curled under his breastbone. He's breathless. He's never met this man before, but he feels like he should have. And maybe he has. One of his only memories of his mother is a bedtime story about people who know each other before birth or breath...

But now isn't the time for reminiscence and the thought is swept from his mind as the man's surprise turns into a smile, the same smile he offers everyone but directed towards Kurt and made all the sweeter for it. He takes the money with a half-bow that makes Kurt laugh though he's still shaking and leans over his shoulder to yell, "Three wheat!" at the door to the oven room. In moments, the rolls are brought out in a white paper bag -- Kurt was lucky enough to catch a fresh batch -- and they rest in the man's hands before passing to Kurt's with a brush of dry, chapped skin on dry, chapped skin.

 _You know hardships_ , Kurt thinks as he offers the man a tentative smile and leaves the bakery, _same as I_. Same as everyone in this city, really. But for some reason, he feels a connection with the stranger who smiled. A spark.

He shakes his head at himself. Snow is sleeting down and he'll have to run if he wants to catch the bus. _It was just the hunger_ , he tells himself, sloshing through puddles he can almost feel through his soles. _Just the smells that made me lightheaded. And he was just a nice guy who smiled enough to brighten my day._

As he jostles between grumpy hulks of threadbare fabric and cigarette smoke on the bus, clinging to a sweaty handle, he adds, _And if it were anything more, you'd be in trouble._

Best to put it behind him.

\- - -

_"Daddy," Kurt asks, "why do we got to hide the books?"_

_Burt Hummel is breathing harder than the thunder in the night sky. It's something from the start of a horror movie: lightning catches the strands of water on Kurt's father's face as he hefts a rusty shovel and heaves it into the rain-damp earth of their backyard, flinging clods. Kurt watches and shivers in the downpour, not understanding. It could be a slipshod burial, guilt and a dead body covered with dirt and patted smooth beyond discovery, except for the fact that it isn't flesh they bury, but books. Kurt shields the thick old volumes with his hands. They dampen anyways, lines like tear trails on beautifully colored covers._

_"Don't ask right now," Burt says, pausing to swipe rain and sweat from his face. He jerks his head to the dent in the ground. "Help dig, Kurt. Ask later."_

_Kurt's five-year-old hands labor to clear away clumps of dirt as his father packs books with pages gluey and wet into an old crate they found in the garage. He backs away as Burt lifts the box with a grunt. "Back up," Burt commands, and he drops the crate into the hole and starts to cover it again, all the dirt they removed filling the gaps between spines and covers and wood slats, innocuous as they can make it._

_Kurt doesn't understand. He doesn't understand at all. These are Mama's favorite books. They smell like her and have her fingerprints on the pages from when she was barely older than Kurt himself, and he can think of hundreds of nights spent dozing in her lap as she read aloud in her soft, vivid voice. Why are they under dirt? Why are they hidden? Who's making them do this? Why? "Daddy?"_

_"Not now, Kurt." Burt takes the clods of dirt with full heads of grassy hair and situates them meticulously on the spot of bare earth. Kurt helps as best he can, and they allow themselves a moment to admire their handiwork before Burt lifts Kurt into his arms, turns, and runs pell-mell inside, out of the rain. He sets his son down in the entryway and peels off their wet, sticky coats, knocks the mud off the shovel and takes it back to the garage. Only then does he take a deep breath and look Kurt in the eye, patting the spot beside him on the couch. "Come sit down," he invites carefully._

_"Can I ask questions now?"_

_"Yeah. Go ahead."_

_Kurt looks down at his hands, so much littler and paler than his daddy’s. "Why did we bury the books?" They're Mama's favorites, he wants to say, they don't belong where it's dark and cold and breathless. What he knows but doesn't really understand is that they are the largest part of Elizabeth Hummel he has left._

_"Because they've made it dangerous for people to have those books now."_

_"Dangerous?" Kurt frowns. "But you're super strong! You can fight anyone! I wanna keep the books. I wanna --"_

_"Kurt!" Burt takes his son by the shoulders and shakes him. Kurt is so surprised that he goes quiet and round-eyed. "Kurt," Burt says again, softly. His hands are warm even through Kurt's shirt. "When I say dangerous, I mean very, very dangerous. They could take us, Kurt. They could take me. Or even a little boy like you. And no one --" He swallows hard. "No one would ever see us again."_

_"Who's 'they'?" Kurt asks, voice tiny and scared._

_"The people who took your mama."_

_"Oh." No one will ever see Mama again. Kurt knows that for sure. That's why he loves the books so much. They're the closest thing to seeing her that Kurt will ever have. "But... I wanna keep the books... Why are they so mean, Daddy? Why we gotta hide 'em?" His eyes are filling with tears. Thunder crashes outside, but he's too sad to be scared. "I wanna read 'em again..."_

_"I know, kiddo." Burt tugs Kurt in for a rough, warm hug. "I know. And you know what?" His voice lowers, indicating a secret. Kurt stops crying and holds his breath as Burt whispers in his ear, "The reason I buried the books instead of burned 'em or somethin' is so one day, when you're a big boy, you can read 'em for yourself. In secret. All right?"_

_"But I am a big boy," Kurt murmurs, wiping his eyes._

_"When you're a bigger boy. Big enough to be a daddy yourself. Sound good?" Burt's arms tighten. He smells good -- not like Mama, but still good. Kurt closes his eyes and inhales._

_"Sounds good," he answers, and Burt tells him how proud he is as he carries him up to bed._

\- - -

Kurt sings to himself as he makes dinner that night. He loves singing. He always has, ever since he was little and his parents would serenade him, Elizabeth's sweet, mellow voice and Burt's gruff, off-key one. There are laws against many things in this city -- some books and some movies and some words and dangerous thoughts and love -- but singing has escaped the death squeeze of the iron fist. For now, at least. Kurt glances at the eye of the camera in the corner of his tiny kitchen, unblinking as it feeds his every move to one of the many screens at headquarters somewhere, and drops his voice to a hum.

The soup is mostly tasteless -- he's taken to mixing it with water these days; he does what he can to get by -- but scalding. The heat sates his hunger as well as anything in his meager pantry. As he drinks, wincing at the sting of salt on his cracked lips, he gazes out the window at his reflection and beyond. There is a film of gray snow in the backyard, dirty, thin as plastic. And somewhere beneath it and feet of frozen dirt is a milk-crate coffin full of books.

He hasn't dug them up. He's wanted to, many times. The day after what he considers his dad's funeral, he almost snapped, almost flung himself at the hard-packed earth and tore at the books' burial shroud til his nails split off and his fingers bled -- but he didn't. Even in the wildest grief he has ever felt, the threat of what could come of that reckless action hung in the back of his mind. _That goes to show how infesting this city is_ , he thinks bitterly and drains the bowl dry, even though it makes his throat sting like clusters of tears.

What was it his dad said to him just weeks before they took him? _"It's a corrupted city that tries to ban love, and a hellish one that almost succeeds."_ Almost. Almost. The men with guns and hypos green with poison missed a few couples here and there as the city turned from bad to worse. Burt and Elizabeth Hummel were one of them. Of course, Kurt reflects, they were only missed for a few years. His mom was taken when he was four, his dad when he was eighteen. Fourteen years and the raw pain was still as agonizing as he remembered. They gave him a plastic bag full of ashes.

He took them to the city limits, ignored the cold stares of the guards, and tossed handfuls over the barbed wire of the electric fence. It was a windy day, and the ashes dissipated easily, whisked far, far away from the city Kurt knows he will never be able to leave.

He went home and almost dug up the books. He didn't. They're still there, moldering quietly in their makeshift grave.

He'll dig them up. One day. He _will_.

He wonders if the camera can sense dangerous thoughts. If there's an electrode he can't see taped to the back of his skull, small as a freckle, wireless, implanted there by the careless brush of a stranger who was really one of them. He searches through his hair, finds nothing.

He thinks.

 _I wonder if the man behind the counter hates the city too_ , Kurt muses, hands cupped around the cooling bowl. _I wonder if he has felt love._

What kind of city tries to ban love?

What kind of city succeeds?

\- - -

_Other than the books, not much changes. Well, things do change, but they're distant things, disjointed. Things Kurt doesn't really understand. They don't affect him, he thinks, and he doesn't affect them, and Daddy doesn't swing him around by his armpits in public anymore, but he still kisses him goodnight and tells him that he loves him and plays dinosaurs with him when Kurt asks, so more or less, he's happy._

_When the changes do start affecting him, it feels like a game at first. It's like playing pretend -- kind of like the way he and Mama would act out the stories she read him at bedtime until they collapsed into giggles. But giggles aren't allowed here, and instead of knights and dragons and princesses, Kurt and Burt stand in front of the full-length mirror and practice being human statues. "Hold your face still, Kurt," Burt instructs. "When you talk to me, don't smile, don't laugh -- don't laugh!" He laughs too as Kurt cracks up, nose wrinkling and breaking his pretense of solemnity. "But in public, Kurt," Burt continues, going stern again, "when there are people around, you have to be serious. You can't hug me or ask me to pick you up, and you can only hold my hand when we're crossing the street. Okay?"_

_"But why?" Kurt asks. He likes holding his daddy's hand. He feels safe and special and happy. Too many bad things, too many changes. He shifts and looks at his face in the mirror. Nothing feels safe or special or happy anymore._

_"Because they don't want you to," Burt says tiredly. He kneels beside his son and holds his gaze in the mirror. How is he supposed to explain this to a child of six? How? How could they do this to kids as young and innocent as his son? He rubs his face with both hands and sighs. "Look, Kurt, it's like this," he begins._

_"You know what love is, right, Kurt?" Kurt nods. Even he senses that now isn't a time for interruptions. "Love is what I feel for your mama. Love is what I feel for you. Love is what you feel for your mama and for me, and love is what you will one day feel for a special person of your own. You follow me?" Another nod. "And love is good, Kurt. Love is very, very good. Don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise._

_"But sometimes love makes people do silly, stupid things. People get into fights over love. People hurt each other over love. People hurt themselves over love. Entire wars can start over love -- lots of people fighting lots of other people, all because they love the same person or thing or different people or things. Love is messy, Kurt. It is good, but it is messy._

_"And..." And here's where it gets tricky. "And some people think we'd be better off without that mess. They think that the best way to stop wars, and hunger, and worries, and instability is by getting rid of love. They don't want boyfriends and girlfriends to love each other. Husbands and wives. Brothers and sisters. Parents and children. Best friends. They think that without that mess, everything will be perfectly in order. They think that without being so devoted to one another, people will think more about serving the government and the city. So..." He blows out a long breath. "So they're trying to get rid of love."_

_Kurt is quiet for minutes. Then: "Is that why they took Mama?"_

_Burt touches his son's small back. "Yeah. That's why they took Mama."_

_"That's why we buried the books? 'Cause they were about love?"_

_"That's why we buried the books."_

_"That's why they want me to stop holding your hand?"_

_"That's why they want you to stop holding my hand."_

_Kurt looks at the floor for what seems like an eternity. Burt rubs his back and tries to swallow the pain and pity for his son and for himself. And suddenly, intensely, with vehemence Burt would never have thought possible from a child, Kurt says, "I hate them."_

_"Don't say things like that," Burt says automatically. For now, there is no surveillance inside their house, but things change like mad these days. Recovering, he lifts Kurt's chin with a single blunt finger, turns his son's head so his set, angry face is towards Burt's, and answers, "I hate them, too."_

\- - -

Kurt wakes at the crack of dawn and walks onto the bus with his eyes still gummy with sleep. The road to the law firm where he works is pitted with potholes that jerk him left and right, shoulders bruising against windows and people who snarl at him. He's too tired to care. These days, it feels like he's tired all the time; he merely rises into a higher-functioning state of tiredness in the afternoons. And yet another day of mopping floors and clearing graffiti off the walls of the building he hates doesn't really help.

Kurt is not a janitor because he enjoys it. He is not a janitor because it's the best career his intelligence can land him (Lord, no). He is a janitor as a small act of personal rebellion: He hates the city with every fiber of his being, and by refusing to rise to higher levels than that of dirty-worker -- higher levels that the city claims to have achieved through the abolishment of personal relationships -- he is coming the closest he feels he ever will to spitting in its face.

He climbs off of the bus, takes the elevator to the floor with his closet, and starts working. Another plus of janitorial work: It occupies his body and releases his mind. He loathes the smell of disinfectant and the squeal of the wheeled bucket on the tiles, but he treasures the endless hours taken up by nothing but swipes of the mop, hours in which he can think and dream and plan, even though he discards those plans as useless moments later. Usually, they're plots to escape. And much like the knight-and-dragon tales buried in his backyard, they're mere stories, things that have no chance of happening and never will.

There is a fence around the city. There are guards patrolling. Plainclothes policemen on every corner, down every alley. Cameras in every corner of every room of every house. How would he even have a chance?

 _That man,_ he finds himself thinking as he scrubs at a skidmark on the tile. _That man behind the counter. Does he want to escape?_

He rolls his eyes at himself. Why does it always go back to him? _He's a stranger,_ Kurt tells himself firmly, _and nothing else_. And yet he finds himself wondering if he should stop by the bakery again this afternoon.

\- - -

_Kurt forgets one day and grabs his daddy’s hand in the midst of a melee on a sidewalk. Someone’s grocery cart has tipped over, and food spills and spoils on the ground, causing a traffic jam as half the crowd rushes forward to fight over the goods and the other half hangs back from the chaos. Burt is right there, solid and warm and comforting, and Kurt knows he doesn’t need to, knows he shouldn’t, but he is a small boy and he is scared and his daddy is right beside him, so he does._

_He grabs Burt’s hand with both of his own and clings to him, even when he jerks in surprise. “I’m scared,” Kurt says in a small voice. Usually this is all Burt needs as a signal to lift Kurt into his strong arms and hug him so tight he forgets what he was scared of in the first place. But things have changed -- things keep changing -- and Kurt forgot._

_Burt yanks his hand free of Kurt’s with the rasp of his callouses on Kurt’s soft skin. Startled, Kurt stares up at him. “Daddy?” he asks._

_There is something new in Burt’s eyes. Although young, Kurt can sense that Burt is masking something, that it hurts him to say what he says next. “You call me Mr. Hummel, young man,” he says stiffly. “You show your elders some respect.”_

_He doesn’t meet Kurt’s gaze, and betrayed, bewildered, and still scared, Kurt clasps his hands together in front of him, for want of someone else’s fingers on the other side._

_A few weeks earlier, they got a letter. Kurt doesn’t remember, but Burt does. It had too many big words for Kurt to read; Burt digested them all with a steady loss of color. The letter addressed an “incident” that happened in a similar situation on a similar sidewalk. Kurt was afraid, and forgetting himself and his place in society, Burt lifted him out of the crush and held him. The letter said that if such an incident occurred again, Kurt would be removed from Burt and Burt from the city. It would not be a peaceful removal. The letter didn’t say that, but it didn’t need to be said._

_So Burt keeps his eyes up, lets Kurt stumble haltingly over the unfamiliar title, and keeps his heartbreak small and quiet inside him._

_Later that night, Kurt stumbles downstairs, awakened by the sounds of tools, clanging and pounding, and Burt swearing softly but clearly beneath his breath. "... Mr. Hummel?" he asks, rubbing a fist in his eye. "Mr. Hummel, what are you doing?"_

_Burt looks up from a mess of shiny metal on the newspaper-blanketed kitchen table with sadness Kurt's too tired to see. "You can call me Daddy when we're home alone, Kurt," he says quietly. He crouches down and opens his arms, and Kurt comes running, pressing himself up against Burt's solid warmth and the familiar smell of sweaty metal and grease with a relief and contentment too deep to name._

_"Okay. Good. Daddy, what are you doing? You woke me up."_

_"I'm making a wheelchair."_

_Kurt pulls back to look at the spokes and rods and wedges, tangled with some dark fabric and tubes of rubber. "A_ wheelchair _? Why?"_

_"Well, you remember that big crowd we were in this mornin'?" Kurt nods. Of course he remembers. Burt lifts them both into the kitchen chair and settles Kurt into his lap. "There were so many people there," he continues, "and they were so crazy, that one little boy the same age as yourself got separated from his mama and knocked into a bus."_

_Kurt gasps. "It ran him over?"_

_"Yeah. Just his legs." Kurt can't even imagine how bad that hurts. He kicks his legs, points his toes, is incredibly thankful he still can. "But he's still alive -- just in a lot of pain. His mama came to our house right after you fell asleep, and 'cause she knows I'm a mechanic and good with wheeled things, she asked me to make him a wheelchair. See, he'll never walk again, Kurt. Ever. He'll use this wheels as his legs..." Burt lifts an axle with a comically large wheel attached and spins it before Kurt's wondering eyes. It shines in the yellow kitchen light. "He can grab here, you see, and pull himself along, and soon he'll be able to go as fast as you, maybe even faster."_

_"Wow," Kurt breathes. "That's really cool. But I'm really glad I can walk," he adds hurriedly. "Sitting down all the time must get boring." After a pause, he asks, "Will I ever get to meet him, Daddy? That little boy?"_

_"I dunno, kiddo. They live on the other side of the city." Burt sets down the axle. Its wheel turns and turns, slow but not yet stilled. "His name is Artie."_

\- - -

He does.

It’s warmer today, and Kurt’s not as hungry, but he does.

He detours from his usual route home and finds the haggardly cheerful, inconspicuous little bakery spilling its scents of delicious things onto the street, and he slips inside, into the line once more. He avoids people. He keeps his hands and his change to himself. And his eyes, for some reason, for a dangerous reason, refuse to be torn away from the gel-haired young man working the counter and smiling at each and every ungrateful customer.

When it’s Kurt’s turn to order, he buys the exact same thing. “Three wheat buns, please.” And the man behind the counter looks up from the cash register and recognizes him again, recognizes him in the deep new shaky way that leaves Kurt breathless and in another way, the way that says _You were here yesterday, you ordered the same thing, you wore the same threadbare coat and gloves without fingers and paid me with the same grimy coins._ It figures, of course, that this man would be the type to remember a customer by order and face.

“Three wheat!” he yells over his shoulder, same as yesterday, and turns back to Kurt with a quizzical little headtilt. “Hello again,” he says.

“Hello.” Kurt folds his hands under the counter, clasps them one inside the other, to still his nerves and hide the fact that they are trembling.

“Three buns were all it took to addict you?” the man asks, teasing, and Kurt feels a rush of warmth at the fact that there are still people willing to joke in this city, in this time.

“Yes. They were delicious.” They were, but Kurt came back for another reason.

And that’s all they have time for, because the buns have emerged, piping hot and fresh in their white paper bag, and Kurt steps out of line to let the next person place his order. He glances over his shoulder as he leaves, hoping to wave a goodbye. But the man is immersed in his work and doesn’t look up.

As Kurt leaves, hugging the bag to his chest, he feels his pulse with two cool fingers on the soft part of his jaw and finds it’s pounding like a drum. _Oh, no_ , he thinks, half sinking, half swooping. _Oh, no._ Dangerous thoughts are a crime, it’s true, but he has come to enjoy them. And it’s been so long since he’s had reason to have any.

\- - -

_“Daddy?” Kurt asks. “Will you tell me a story?”_   
  
_Burt turns around from where he’s winding closed the blinds and seats himself on the edge of Kurt’s bed with a huff of breath. He’s certainly not as young as he used to be. “A story, eh?” he muses. Kurt hasn’t asked for a story since Elizabeth was taken. Burt’s always assumed the idea to be a painful one; stories were the special bond Kurt had with his mama. But he’s certainly not going to discourage his son’s asking._

_He needs all the comfort he can get in a world determined to be cruel to him, that’s for sure._

_“Yeah,” Kurt says quietly. He’s curled on his side under a heavy, brightly colored quilt sewn by Burt’s mother, long ago, back when people still had the time and desire to make things with their hands. Kurt strokes a patch of fabric patterned with clouds with one forefinger. “Can... can you tell me the one Mama always used to tell? My favorite?”_

_“Sure. Was that the one about the unicorn who was really a princess? Or one of those dragon things?”_

_Kurt snorts softly. “Nah, Daddy, I’m too old for those now.” He’s nine. If he sees his father’s crestfallen face, he doesn’t show it. “I mean... the one about the souls. And the people who knew each other before they were born. Please? I guess I’m kind of too old for that one, too, but... it’s nice.”_

_“Of course, Kurt.” Burt sighs and bends his back, spine cracking. “You know I won’t be as good as your mama, though, right?” he asks gruffly. “She was a real master an’ all. I’m just a dad.”_

_“Just do your best.” Kurt pulls the blanket to his chin._

_“Okay. Where to start...? Once upon a time -- that’s how all the good ones start, right?"_

_Kurt smiles. “Uh-huh."_

_“So I’m doin’ somethin’ right. Well, once upon a time, in the big dark place where, uh, people live before they’re attached to little babies and made into actual people, there were two souls. Well, there were a lot of souls in there. Hundreds of billions of trillions, all the people who will ever be born, and they all rustled around all the time an’ floated by each other without touchin’, an’ they were kinda like ghosts but not really ‘cause ghosts are from dead people and these were people who hadn’t been born --”_

_“Daddy.”_

_“All right, all right... There were two souls in this huge endless dark place, and though these souls lived years an’ years without meetin’ each other, ever, and though it was really unlikely for souls to ever touch ‘cause they mostly avoided each other, they bumped into each other one day. No one knows why. They just crossed paths, an’ they touched, an’ instead of goin’ their separate souly ways, they stopped an’ decided to get to know each other._

_“Well, these two souls, they talked for a while in the darkness an’ found out they were really very fond of each other. They couldn’t see each other ‘cause it was always nighttime an’ souls don’t have eyes, an’ they had to talk very loud over all the soul-rustlin’, but that didn’t matter. They were friends, good friends, and they promised to find each other again someday, once they were actual breathing people._

_“The souls were called out of the big dark place one by one and attached to little babies and sent off to be people. And ‘cause babies have only watery little memories of the big dark place, the two souls forgot about each other. Well, almost. When you meet a soul before you’re born, you never really forget ‘em, ya know?_

_“Those two babies with the souls who met each other grew up into kids and then teenagers and then adults like your mama and me, and one day, they were walking down the street in opposite directions, totally by chance. They walked, caught up in their own separate lives, and woulda passed by each other entirely if they hadn’t made eye contact for no reason at all._

_“The two souls recognized each other, even though the humans didn’t, and they jumped for joy inside of their human shells, an’ accordin’ to your mama, there’s somethin’ like a spark that they felt. Well, not just accordin’ to your mama.” Burt smiles. “I felt it, too._

_“And that spark made the two humans look at each other with huge startled eyes. And one said, ‘Hello?’ and the other said, ‘Hello?’ and the first said, ‘Excuse me, do you know the time?’ ‘cause they were silly humans who didn’t know how to say, ‘I know you and I love you’ right off the bat, the way their souls told them to. But that didn’t matter in the end, ‘cause they fell in love an’ got married an’ had a little boy who looked a lot like you.”_

_Kurt giggles. “I am that little boy, Daddy.”_

_“That you are. And your mama and I were the two souls lucky enough to meet before we became people.” Burt takes a deep breath and lets it out. “The end.”_

Elizabeth _, he thinks._ Oh, how I miss you. _He wishes the words could call her back, call her back into the room where she told that same story to this same little boy so many, many times. They don’t, but they’re good enough._

_Kurt sinks back into his pillow with a contented smile. He yawns, face scrunching up like it does when he grins. "You're almost as good as Mama," he murmurs, high praise from a connoisseur of bedtime stories. "I wish she could hear. She'd be so proud of you."_

_Throat mysteriously clogged, Burt answers, "I bet she would."_

_"I want a soulmate," Kurt mumbles as he nestles down into his bedding. In the lamplight, he looks tiny. "That's what Mama called them, the souls who met before they were people. And that's what she called you and her. Soulmates. I like that word." His forehead wrinkles, and he amends thoughtfully, "I guess I can't have one, though. I guess I'm not allowed."_

_He looks so sad, lower lip full and trembling, that Burt leans over and kisses him on the forehead. "Don't listen to them," he whispers into his son's ear. These are words too dangerous to be spoken aloud, even in the safety of their own home, which might not be safe too much longer. They are also words Kurt needs to hear. He needs to know that rules can be broken, that it's dangerous but possible, that his father's heart threatens to fragment at the very idea of his son growing up in a society that threatens best friends and parents and soulmates with horrors beyond belief, all for the purpose of sculpting a hyperefficient supercity out of the typical emotional human mess. He needs to know that it's okay to be a part of the typical emotional human mess. And so Burt risks it and breathes, "You do have a soulmate, Kurt, I promise. And you'll find them one day and love them, no matter what. Okay?"_

_When he draws back, Kurt's face is glowing with the glory of possibility and condoned disobedience. He is a nine-year-old little boy, after all. "Okay," he whispers back. "I just have to wait for the spark. Right?"_

_"Right," Burt answers. "Just wait for the spark." He lifts himself off of Kurt's bed and heads for the door. "Goodnight," he says, but does not tack on those three most forbidden words: I love you. They tumble and rumble around inside him, marbles in a funnel, but remain concealed. Neighbors with long necks and pricked ears could be anywhere._

_"Goodnight." And, as he does every night, Kurt whispers into his pillow, "I love you." It's soft and quick, but Burt hears. He does._

_He just doesn't have the heart to stop him._

\- - -

Kurt goes to the bakery every afternoon for the rest of the week.

He buys the same thing every time. Three wheat buns. And every time, the man behind the counter looks at him with a smile that grows bigger with each passing day, with eyes that hold Kurt's just long enough to be dangerous and to call up the flicker in his stomach that he's doing his best not to acknowledge, with the white paper bag held in his two rough hands before he transfers it to Kurt with as much care as though it holds fine china instead of warm, hearty bread. Kurt wants to say something past their safe, standard exchange -- hello, how are you, thank you, goodbye -- but doesn't dare risk it. Can't risk it, really, because his stomach knots and his voice swallows itself and he ends up clasping his hands the way he has since he was seven, in frustration and in nerves. The words he really wants to say stay bottled inside him: _What's your name? How old are you? Did your dad ever hold your hand? I think I might kind of sort of really love you, and it's crazy and dumb and illegal and you're just a stranger with kind eyes and kind hands, and I'm trying to put it behind me, but I think I love you. I do._

But he smiles back, and it's like they share a secret, a wordless one that the sentinel cameras can't catch. Better this way, he tells himself yet again as he steps onto the slush-skinned sidewalk, but the words grow thinner with every repetition. One day, he knows, they won't be enough at all.

He tears off pieces of bread delicately with his fingertips and eats them as slowly as possible, savoring. Birds flutter down sometimes to peck at the crumbs he drops. Scrawny ravens, made bold by years of feet too weary to kick at them, and clouds of sparrows chattering like children; he lets the dust fall behind him to line their stomachs, as hungry as his own. The birds learn to look for him. They conglomerate on the corner by the bus stop and watch with beady eyes as he approaches.

There's even a cat, once. It's emaciated and mangy, fur untrimmed and matted. It slinks with its belly in filth and snarls softly at passersby from its spot near the bakery's door. Cats probably don't eat bread on a regular basis, but this one looks starving, and Kurt kneels in trampled snow and mud to offer a bit of wheat bun. It gives him a yellow-eyed glare for half a minute before gingerly accepting with needle teeth, and soon it's purring and allowing Kurt to pet it until he realizes he's almost missed the bus and sprints off to catch it.

Though it's dangerous, they haven't found a way to police thought -- not yet -- and so Kurt lets himself imagine having something more than bread to warm his hands. He pictures the man behind the counter walking beside him. Talking to him. Slipping his hand into Kurt's, squeezing. But it's only Kurt's own fingers, the ghost of a memory, and three wheat buns that he holds now. The birds are his only company as he waits in the stiff winter air for a bus that will take him to his big, lonely house.

Part of him knows how stupid it is. The daydreams that leave him staring into the middle distance at work, mop motionless in his hands. The night dreams that wake him with a smell like fresh bread and cologne in his nostrils, though he's the only one in his bed. The dangerous, beautiful, idiotic thoughts. He should throw them aside. Grow up already. He's twenty-one now; it's about time to leave behind _all_ the fairytales, not just the ones he buried with his father that stormy night so long ago.

It's not like the man likes him back. It's not like he's even gay. It's not like he's deep-down daring like Kurt, privately fuming, lonely, yearning, dodging cameras whenever he can, learning policemen's faces and avoiding them instead of walking by with his head held high like any good citizen would.

Part of him refuses to be squashed or trampled down and whispers, _The spark. The spark._

He tells himself it was just a story his mom made up because she loved his dad. He tells himself it's all in his head and would never happen anyways.

He holds his own hand, clasped tight to his chest for warmth, and gets three wheat buns every afternoon.

\- - -

_"What about sex?"_

_Burt barely glances up from the newspaper. Kurt can't tell if it's because he's trying to keep his composure or because he was expecting the question. "What about it? If you're expectin' me to explain the specifics, well, quit expectin'. You're a smart boy."_

_"Love is no longer allowed because it is obsolete and ineffective," Kurt recites carefully. He refrains from looking over his shoulder at the round baleful eye of the week-old camera in the corner of the dining room, which tracks his every move, every twitch of his fingers, every sip Burt takes of his coffee. "But, back in... the bad times..." He says it doggedly, hiding the dull throb of anger, the paper cut somewhere deep inside him because he's saying something the camera forces him to say. Something he does not believe and never will. "Back in the times when love ran free and things were messy, people had sex with their significant others. Not with just anyone. People still have babies. Babies come from sex. How?"_

_Burt sighs and folds the newspaper, resigning himself to an unfinished sports section and an uncomfortable session of Q &A. "Well, I wasn't gonna tell you when all this started becomin' prominent, that's for sure..." He grimaces so quickly Kurt almost doesn't catch it. But the advent of the camera has led to his and his father's fluency in a kind of half-language made of microseconds and expressions and things unspoken. They use neutral terms for the change and the city or praiseful ones, because anything negative is reason enough for a printed warning. And they've received a dangerous amount of those between the two of them._

_He continues. "But I guess I can tell you now. You think you're old enough?" He looks at Kurt shrewdly. Kurt subtly puffs out his chest and tries to look as not-twelve-years-old as possible._

_"Yeah, okay, whatever. So." Burt's brusquer by far than he used to be, but it doesn't hurt Kurt so much anymore, not really. He understands the world they live in and the consequences of disobeying a lot more than he did at age six. "The city allows sex for its original purpose, which is, you know, babymaking."_

_"Procreation?"_

_"Yeah. That. The act of sex for pleasure or as an expression of that detestable thing called love is despicable and will result in a citizen's immediate and nonliving ejection from society." Burt finishes in a fast-droned monotone. In recent times, he's gotten much better at hiding the repulsion he feels towards the words he must say. Kurt can barely read the wrinkle of disgust on his face at all._

_"Guess there's no hope for me then," Kurt says to himself, then freezes. He turns slowly to face Burt with his face hot and flushed._

_But Burt doesn't seem surprised. He raises an eyebrow and unfolds his paper again, downing the last of his cold, gritty coffee with that same veiled distaste. "Like boys, do you?" he asks._

_"I don't like anyone," Kurt says on a deep inhale. "I am an intelligent young man who understands that attraction of a physical or emotional form is the first ingredient in a recipe for disaster." Do you accept me? he asks in not-language._

_With barely a glance at the watchful camera, Burt answers, "I've taught you well."_ I accept you and I love you and I wish I could tell you that, I wish I could come to the marriage of you and the man you will someday love, _say the slight slump of his shoulders and the hand that trembles around the mug._

 _Kurt stands and takes his cereal bowl to the sink, and as he passes behind his dad's chair, he touches him briefly on the back, a butterfly touch, a breath touch, well hidden from the camera's gaze._ I love you, too.

\- - -

Kurt dreams more vividly than ever before of a man with slicked-down hair, warm brown eyes, and fingers as chapped as his own. The man is kneeling in his backyard, running his hands lightly over the snow that soaks into the knees of his jeans. He looks up to see Kurt in the window and waves. "I've found it," he calls, audible through the glass. "I've found what you're looking for."

Kurt doesn't remember what he was looking for, but feels a tremor of excitement all the same. It was something he lost, he's sure of it. Something important. Why else would the man be waving; why else would he be coatless in the cold, urgency written all over his face?

Somehow Kurt finds himself outside without consciously leaving his bedroom. He stands by the man, who draws a rectangle in the snow with his finger. "It's here," he says, indicating the ground.

"No," Kurt says with vague disappointment. "That's not it. I knew that was there the whole time." The crate with the books, of course. Of course he knows; he never lost them. There was a misunderstanding. And besides, he'll read the books later. Someday. He turns to go inside and is stopped by a warm hand on his wrist.

"Not the books," the man corrects, though Kurt never spoke the words aloud. He shakes his head earnestly and tugs Kurt down to crouch beside him. "Here. Here's what you lost."

He kisses him, and Kurt feels a spark.

Kurt jolts awake so hard he flies upright. There is a pounding in his skull and water in his eyes, called up by the too-bright sunlight. On instinct he flies to the window and throws open the blinds. But no -- the backyard is devoid of footprints, all imperfections covered in a blanket of fresh white snow.

Only a dream. Only a dream.

He touches two fingers to his mouth. Imagines lips. A smile --

_No, goddammit! No!_

He wars with himself. Half of him is afraid, deathly afraid. What if the cameras see straight through his skull and into the treachery within? What if he talks in his sleep? What if his dream has been broadcast to the city headquarters and is being picked apart at this very moment? An easy analyzation, of course. The symbolism was hardly obscure.

"Just a bad dream," he says aloud, and sits down, for the benefit of anyone watching.

_That was not a bad dream. That was not a bad dream at all. That was the best dream I have had in years._

The other half of him jumps inside as he realizes that he just had a dream about the bakery boy kissing him, and he liked it. And it was nice. And his subconscious is rallying itself and rebelling against the unjust, uncalled-for iron fist, and the good dream was more than a very good dream, it was a protest. A protest in dreamworld, unseen by anyone who would disapprove (hopefully), but a protest, and they are what Kurt lives for.

_"Here. Here's what you lost."_

Kurt touches his chest and finds that he's shaking.

_"The two souls recognized each other, even though the humans didn’t, and they jumped for joy inside of their human shells, an’ accordin’ to your mama, there’s somethin’ like a spark that they felt..."_

A soulmate?

A stranger.

The spark.

Dumb idea. Dumb, beautiful, dangerous, lovely, not even possible idea.

He's going to the bakery this afternoon. Of course. But this time, he's not just taking himself and his aging coat and his useless gloves and his spare change and his trembling, unallowed glances. Kurt crosses the cold floor and rips the back of an old receipt in half lengthwise, finds a pen, swallows hard, and writes the first words that cross his mind. "I'd better not forget to get milk again," he says to himself and the camera, though the little slip of paper folded and crumpled in his perspiring hand is most definitely more than a grocery list.

Kurt tucks the note deep into the pocket of the jeans he fell asleep wearing, gathers his things, and leaves the house. He's still shaking and he still feels exposed, new, like the top layer of his flesh has been peeled away and tender fresh skin is tingling in contact with the frigid air. He forgets his hat first and then his wallet and has to undo the tedious rigamarole of locks on his door (you can never be too careful) twice. It's going to be a long day -- at least until four o'clock this afternoon.

\- - -

_When you live in a society that makes you feel like the only sane person on a planet of crazies, it’s surprisingly easy for the roles to reverse. Their whispers, their sidelong glances. The way they are so sure of the motions and thoughts and words that you try your best to mimic, though they hack against the grain of your soul. The probing eyes, accusing, like they know something you don’t -- although it’s you who’s the more knowledgeable here. Right?_

_Sometimes Kurt feels like he’s the crazy one. There are moments of uncertainty, usually when he’s singularly quiet in a crowd that’s fervently discussing some new and progressive law, moments where he looks at his knotted hands and wonders if the words burned into his head are the wrong ones. They’re rare, these moments, but petrifying. For seconds, maybe even minutes, he trembles on the edge of the knife between his feet, familiar illegal certainty on one side and fearsome animal confusion on the other, rusty nails trailing down the exposed flesh of his heart. For minutes, Kurt feels horribly, inescapably, breathtakingly wrong._

_It usually ends after that. He’s right. Of course he’s right. He’s right to believe in love and its validity; he’s right to tell himself the soulmates story over and over and over again as he lies in darkness and loneliness, though really he should’ve long outgrown it by now. It would be madness to think that he is anything but completely, totally, 100% right._

_Right?_

_One day the madness claws its way up into his throat while he’s eating dinner across the table from Burt. He feels it snarling and drowns it with enough milk to make him cough. Burt glances up. “You okay, kid?”_

_“Yes, Mr. Hummel.” He’s not all right. The thoughts are back -- not the ones the city calls “dangerous,” thoughts of rebellion and love that so frequently populate his mind, but ones he knows are truly lethal. He has to fight them. He has to beat them down. He can’t let them win._

_"You sure? You look pale." Burt looks at him with concern he could never fully manage to mask. "That soup upsettin' your stomach? I knew that meat was older than he said it was --"_

_"No," Kurt says with difficulty. "The soup is fine." There is a colony of beads of sweat collecting on the back of his neck. He imagines a stain soaking his collar, a scarlet letter of guilt as bold as blood. You'll come to a bad end, mocks the voice in his head._ You're believing something obsolete. Something wrong. Your dad is a misguided fool. Grow up. You're fourteen. It's time to put the past behind you and accept the present and future this city's been trying to work into your pigheaded brain all your life.

_"No," he growls aloud. Burt looks at him, worried. "I'm fine," he assures him, though he most certainly isn't._

_They eat in silence, and Burt looks through paperwork and sighs occasionally and Kurt sits in turmoil and tries to sear out the doubt with soup. It'd be so easy to just give in. To accept the city's relentless brainwashing. To submit. To give up everything he believes in and fights for, to stop believing in and fighting for it. To live peacefully if not happily and die a complacent, unhurt citizen of the most efficient city in the world. To turn in his dad --_

_His hand jerks so hard that his spoon flings broth on Burt's paperwork. Burt stares at him. "You're not fine." And they are rigid words, stilted words, faded with the stress of all the raw emotions and things he really wants to say, always rubbing, always beating on the mask he must wear -- but there is love behind them, real love, the only Kurt has left from the world. And how could he ever even consider handing over to the authorities the man who held his hand until it almost meant death and told him a story about souls and a spark?_

_Suddenly he can't take it anymore. He drops his spoon. "You're right. I'm not," he says, and before he can chastise his feet, they are carrying him out of the house and onto the street._

_He runs._

_He sprints like a madman away from the yells of the father who must pretend not to love him, away from the grim-mouthed house with the intrusive cameras, away from the books and the guilt stifled in the backyard and away from all the things that remind him that he is not okay. His breath is as ragged as the hems of his jeans and his steps fall unevenly, stumbling, picking themselves up again, pounding. It's a sweltering summer evening, and some neighbors are on their porches, watching him. He wants to scream at them. To swear. He doesn't. He runs._

_No one tries to stop him until he's at the edge of town. The guards leap at him as he approaches the fence, and he was expecting this, dreading this, but he struggles anyways against their navy-coated brawn. Stolid and hard, they do not speak a word as they drag him back down the road he just ran. Multiple times he bites their hands and once he even escapes, but they tackle him to the asphalt that shreds and bleeds his knees. He's so small. So weak. And they are everywhere._

_The neighbors on the porches withdraw as the police haul him home because the story has concluded exactly how they expected. They mutter, shake their heads at yet another generation of that Hummel clan, destined for failed insurgency, born rotten. Kurt spits at them over the guards' soldiers as they force him up his own front steps and feels a small tweak of satisfaction as saliva hits a front door._

_Burt is still seated at the table. Kurt's bowl of soup sits across from him, stone-cold. He peruses the packet of paperwork as though it is the most intriguing thing in the world. Seeing the police and his son, he flips it closed and nods gravely at the two burly men. Casually, he says, "Thank you, sirs. Thank you kindly. I was going to follow him myself, but then I saw him headed for the city limits and I thought, better leave it in the all-capable hands of our city's police force."_

_"You made the right choice, Mr. Hummel," says the man with a bruising grip on Kurt's right arm. He's inside. Why won't they let go? It hurts. "And although it will require further investigation on the part of our science and surveillance department, this incident along with the many others of which we have record appears to be enough grounds to classify young Hummel as insane." The vise on Kurt's bicep tightens marginally._

_Insane?_

_"And... and what will this... entitle?" Even Burt looks momentarily lost._

_"Heavy surveillance on your household, a note in his city record, and the monthly delivery of medication, free of cost." The men's hands relax, and one gives Kurt an ungentle shove into his chair._

_Insane?_

_"And please, sir," continues the other man, "keep an eye on your charge. If he attempts another dangerous break -- or shows any sign of considering one -- he will be removed from the city."_

_It will not be a peaceful removal. They don't say that, but that doesn't need to be said._

_"Yes. I -- I'll do that. Thank you." The men nod and turn to leave, broad shoulders bumping in the narrow doorway. The instant they're gone, all the fire leaves Kurt and he shrinks. His arms feel mangled, his knees wet and hot and studded with gravel._

_He can't make himself look his father in the eye. But that doesn't matter. His mind is consumed with the faint sting of failure (though he couldn't really expect to succeed) and the fiercer, louder, whitewashing thought:_ Insane? Oh, God. Am I insane? No. No, I can't be. I'd know -- Dad would know -- this city is insane, I was just angry, everyone has moments, oh, God...

Insane. I can't be insane.

_He looks up to see Burt crying. Very quietly. Almost unnoticeably. His eyes go wet and then dry again, and then it's over, and then Kurt feels a prickly rush of warmth in his stomach, affection like blood itching a tired limb back to life. It's the worst feeling in the world to sit feet away from the last living person who loves him and yet be unable to beg his consolation, to ask him if he's really crazy, to knock the table aside and fall into his arms and cry like a little boy with dirt under his fingernails and books in his backyard. But it's the best feeling in the world to love him back._

_And that feeling is how Kurt Hummel knows he's not crazy. The roles switch themselves smoothly into place: He is sane, his dad is sane, and the city is screwed-up beyond belief with no hope of untangling, yelling its endless rules and regulations that are a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. The city knows it, too. And it's horribly fitting, somehow, that they've decided to hide their own immorality by giving one of the only moral people within its boundaries a title that will leave him distrusted for years._

_The game continues, he thinks, and turns back to his soup, cold as ashes on his tongue._

\- - -

Kurt stands in the line that leads to the counter, breathes deeply, and flexes his fist inside his pocket. Coins cut dents into the calloused pads of his fingers and a small, folded strip of paper etches neatly into the crease of his palm. His hands feel hot and numb all at once. He imagines drawing his fist up, precious bounty cupped inside, and having it freeze at waist height as the man stares at him and he stares back, petrified. He imagines humiliating himself so badly he can never return.

He stops imagining.

The line inches forward, the elderly woman in front of him grumbles about the price of cinnamon rolls, and Kurt's heart feels like it's vibrating, it's beating so fast. Worst-case scenarios chase themselves through his head, each one more frightening than the last: the man staring, the man laughing, the man immediately picking up the phone, the man reading the note aloud to the mass assembled in the bakery's bread-smelling eaves and gesturing them to seize Kurt with his face twisted in disgust...

It's always possible to misjudge someone. Always. Nothing is ever certain. Can hunger cause lightheadedness and the illusion of a spark? Probably. Kurt tucks his scarf up over his lips, though he's sweating like he's an hour from death, and squeezes his hand so tight he can feel every ridge of metal.

People brush or shove by, leaving the line with their baked goods, and Kurt's throat becomes steadily drier as he nears the front. His thigh twitches -- sudden, barely controllable urges to bolt -- and his forehead slickens and his lip feels wet and torn from how hard he's chewing on it and oh, shit.

Here he is.

The man behind the counter ducks his head a little before his eyes grab onto Kurt's, and he smiles in a way that Kurt has come to learn is for him and him alone. It's a more earnest smile than the cookie-cutter one he offers the other customers, gentler and wider and causing his eyes to crinkle into starbursts at the corners, and Kurt holds onto this fact as he opens his mouth, loses his voice, closes it, opens it, and says in little more than a whisper, "Hello."

"H-hello." The man leans his elbows on the counter, and Kurt's hands tug towards each other from his pockets, begging to meet in front of his belly and wrap around each other like they're clasping the rope that links him to all that's safe and familiar.

 _But you want this,_ he reminds himself. _You know the danger. You know the risks. You're willing. Inhale, exhale, stop your ankles from trembling, he's just a person, it's just a note, you're fine, calm down..._

"The regular?" the man asks when the silence drags on.

"Oh! Y-yes, please." Kurt blushes. But the man on the other side of all the glass and flour doesn't laugh or look at Kurt askance at all. He tilts his head, curious but not pushy, and brings one hand up to rest on the counter. And, as he turns to call over his shoulder, "Three wheat," that hand slides forward -- so subtly, so casually it might be a thoughtless accident -- to brush against Kurt's elbow.

Kurt jumps and loses his breath and flicks his eyes down to see the man's blunt fingertip resting in the coarse crease of his jacket, moving lightly, an infinitesimal stroke. So soft it might be imagination and so powerful that Kurt's spine shivers inside of him.

His breath is knocked out of him and he's finding it difficult to keep his balance and it's all from one light, simple, possibly coincidental touch.

The man looks at Kurt in the space of a heartbeat, but his eyes give it away. They're wide and uncertain. _He's just as scared as I am_ , Kurt realizes, disbelieving. Followed by another thought: _Oh, God, don't be scared._ In response, in comfort, he surprises himself by removing his fist from his pocket, money and words ensconced inside, and crossing his arms, middle knuckle touching the fingertip resting on his arm. The man's eyes go even wider before he withdraws his hand and runs his fingernails down the cash register. He stares at it fixedly with his lips parted just enough that Kurt can hear his breath.

Kurt is _really_ finding it hard to stand. The woman behind him puts a hand on his arm to stabilize him, a rare gesture of kindness from a stranger. And she'd hate him, probably, if she knew the source of his unsteadiness. He smiles at her, takes his arm back, and closes his eyes briefly before opening them to the top of a bowed, gelled head.

"Here," he says quietly. The man's attention snaps up at the sound of his voice. "Here," he repeats and offers his fist, bites his lip, breathes. Steels himself. Pries his fingers open so the contents are displayed palm-up and at an angle: coins, almost spilling onto the counter, and a tiny square of paper, white and folded and bright as a star.

The man notices, Kurt can tell, but covers it remarkably well. His eyes don't leave Kurt's for a moment as he scoops the coins and the note into his hands. Deftly he drops the change into the register and keeps the paper wedged between two fingers, hidden from sight. "I..." He swallows. "I should check that we haven't run out of butter. My coworkers tend to have difficulty finding it. I'll be right back." He heads for the back room, fist clenched around a secret.

Kurt slumps against the counter as full realization hits him: The beautiful, dangerous, life-threatening ideas, the incriminating thoughts, all the worry and affection and nerves and maybe love that he harbors are in the hands of a stranger, being uncrumpled with trembling fingers, being read. Eight words. Eight words with the ability to change and shake and possibly ruin his life.

_My name is Kurt, and I love you._

"Are you all right?" inquires the unusually concerned stranger, tugging at him with hands the color of nicotine stains. "You look like death, boy. You got the plague?"

"N-no. No, I'm fine. I just... Hungry. I'm just hungry." She nods, satisfied with his answer, and lets go.

The man emerges just when Kurt feels like he's drowned in nervous bile and sweat and fear, just when he almost decides to go tearing out onto the street without an answer or the buns, just when his bones have rattled so much he's sure there are joints loose and lolling inside of him. Kurt doesn't look. Can't look. He keeps his eyes down and feels his stomach roll and knots his quivering hands together and smells cologne and the familiar aroma of three wheat buns, hot and buttered. I could have just bought myself an early death, he thinks and tastes sourness, and in combat comes The spark, the spark, and then the man speaks.

"Here," he says. His voice is soft-edged and fragile and his eyes, when Kurt finally meets them over the white paper bag, are full of wonder. "Here you go," he says again and holds out the buns. "Careful -- they're hot. You might... you might want to hold them at the top."

His finger skims lightly, deliberately, over the scalloped rim of the bag, where Kurt can see a faint stain of ink from inside. Suddenly he feels giddy and top-heavy with the seeds of astonishment and relief. "I will," he answers. "Thank you." He puts as much meaning, as much emotion, as he can into those two words, smiles pale and marveling, and leaves with two dark brown eyes holding him like they see a miracle.

Outside, he checks over his shoulder and rolls down the top of the bag just long enough to see nine beautiful words written in small, hurried handwriting:

**_My name is Blaine, and I love you, too._ **

\- - -

_The pills that arrive in their mailbox monthly are free, but the placebos for which Burt risks life and limb by buying them off the black market cost an arm and a leg. Kurt's unsure how they're managing to pay for commodities and food and the little oblongs of sugar paste at the same time, but they are, more or less, and he's infinitely grateful. He's not dumb, after all. If the city knows he's truly sane but wants him to conform to the label they stuck on his back, they'll do everything in their power to do so. He imagines molecules of poison dissolving in his stomach, portions of his brain going dim forever, words and manners and movements forgotten until he's as softminded as they'd like him to be._

_So he lets his dad run the maze of back alleys to the shiftiest and least-controlled corner of town, all for a little green tube filled with little fake pills, even though he's throwing himself in the face of a monster every single time._

_They don't say anything about the "insanity" or the medication or the danger or any of it because they can't. They live in glass boxes in glass houses, rules within rules within rules within an electric fence, and they are suffocating just slowly enough to stay alive._

\- - -

 _Blaine_ , Kurt thinks as his hands sit frozen around a bus handle. _Blaine_ , he thinks as some rude kid steps on his foot and doesn't apologize. _Blaine_ , he thinks as he steps into his own driveway, the buns now stone-cold in their illegal bag. _Blaine_.

_He loves me._

His laugh, sudden and sharp and marveling, doesn't slot well with the crisp winter air. He laughs harder and makes it fit. Never before have three words made him feel like falling into his front yard and laying on his back and grinning until snowflakes line his throat. _He loves me._

_Blaine._

_Loves me._

There is another person in this clenched-jaw, iron-fisted, halfway-to-hell city who believes in love, and he's a man, and he's beautiful, and he smells like bread and cologne, and his eyes are as soft and warm as an embrace, and his name is Blaine, and he loves Kurt.

Kurt dances inside and pulls a bun out of the bag and inhales its yeasty, wheaty scent and smiles into it as he takes a bite. He still feels jittery and uneven, winded and awed, disbelieving and just on the cusp of full, glorious belief. It was such a chance to take, repercussions as serious as death dangling over his head; he took it and sidestepped the danger (though there's still risks, of course, even more than before) and there are nine words written on the inside of a white paper bag and someone loves him and he loves him back. He makes some kind of muffled noise into the bread as his stomach twists happily, and he shivers as he remembers the spark, and he clenches his fists into the skin of the bun as he imagines seeing the man tomorrow, seeing Blaine tomorrow, watching him smile a smile that reaches the blushing apples of his cheeks, holding Blaine's hand instead of his own and whispering all the shy new words into the shell of his ear --

Oh.

_No. No, I can't do that._

His elation fades somewhat, because what good is love if you can't express it? _No_ , he tells himself firmly, _don't think like that. You managed with your dad for all those years, didn't you? You made it work. And you'll make it work with him. With Blaine._

_But you and Blaine don't live in the same house; you don't share a language of gestures and moving eyebrows and touches hidden from the cameras; you may love him and he may love you, but he's a stranger, almost..._

He imagines nestling in his mother's lap and listening with wide eyes and one finger hooked over the corner of his mouth as she read aloud in her musical voice: _And the prince took the princess into his arms and kissed her because he loved her more than anything in the world._

 _It's not fair_ , Kurt thinks, coming down from his floaty place. _But nothing's fair. And maybe this whole relationship thing's gonna be difficult -- okay, there's no "maybe" about it -- but at least you have a chance._

_How do you even know he wants a relationship? Maybe he's happy with just the confession. Maybe that's the farthest he's willing to extend his neck. Maybe you'll not only have to bear being alone your entire life, but also being loved and unable to experience it._

_God. I need to stop thinking._ He stuffs the rest of the bun into his mouth, finds water to drink, and touches the edge of the bag in passing, to reassure himself. Then he realizes that it's extremely stupid to leave the words lying around. God, how he wants to save them -- tear them off and smell their ink and sleep with the crime beneath his pillow -- but they're easy evidence if ever the city gets the urge to destroy him.

Never has he been so thankful for his heating system to have overreached itself and collapsed for the fourth time in a week. He ignores the twinge in his chest and crumples the bag to use as kindling. He warms his hands on roses of flame spurred on by nine forbidden words.  

They curl and singe and crumble against the half-charred logs, and Kurt rests on his heels beside the mouth of the fireplace, treasuring the warmth on his face and the warmth within.

 _Whatever happens,_ he tells himself, _Blaine loves me. That's more than I had yesterday. That's more than most of the people in this city will ever have_. The words are ash in the gullets of the flames, but they are also burned into Kurt's mind, permanent, forever. _I love him, and he loves me_ \-- just the word, the thought, the oh-so-dangerous idea is enough to call up giddiness -- and they can't take that away, no matter how hard they try.

And they're gonna try hard.

\- - -

_"Kurt," Burt says one day, and his voice is so different from usual that Kurt looks up. "Kurt, I can't do this anymore."_

_Cautiously, Kurt closes the schoolbook in his lap and reaches for his notepad, one eye on his dad the whole time. Burt is looking out the window with frustration and something else etched on his face. A revelation, maybe. Or recklessness. "Can't do what?" he asks, playing dumb for the camera. He's well aware of what his dad is getting at._

_It was bound to happen, after all. Only a matter of time. If you leave a bear unattended in a trap, it will eventually claw its way free, even if that means gnawing off its own paw. It's too proud to die of hunger._

_"This. Any of this." Burt looks at the forgotten notepad in Kurt's hand and then at his face. His eyes are bright and his mouth set. "It's not healthy. It's not sane. It's --"_

Stop, _Kurt wants to say._ Please stop. You know what they'll do to you, and I can't think about that, and I can't let that happen, and if you die, I'll die. I'm only eighteen. Don't do this. Please stop. _But he's more capable of stopping an angry grizzly than he is Burt Hummel._

 _"I wanted you to have a good life, Kurt. Your mom and I, we wanted to give you the world." Strikes one and two: suggesting this life is anything less than perfect and mentioning, even vaguely, that he and Elizabeth love him. "We moved here 'cause we thought it would be a good beginning and a nice, happy place for a little boy to grow up, and it's not." Strike three. Kurt imagines attention flicking to their screen in headquarters, the person who wears the headphones for the Hummel household sitting bolt upright in shock and outrage. "It's horrible. It's rotten through and through and the only way you can escape is through death, and I'm startin' to think death might be better than -- than this!" He flings his arms out. "Damn cameras everywhere, you can't have privacy anymore. People looking at you no other way than sideways. And the laws, the goddamn laws!" His face is so full of emotion, so passionate. So broken. "And Elizabeth. They took my Elizabeth. My love." Strikes four, five, six, seven, ten, twenty, a hundred, and pain as fresh as the day it struck. Kurt touches his own heart and feels it thundering._ Oh, Dad, you're writing your own death sentence. Please stop, look at the cameras, say it was a moment of insanity, please stop...

_Burt takes Kurt's shoulders and looks him in the eye. Surprisingly, he seems calm, deathly calm. "Listen to me, son." Son. Forbidden word. "You're saner than any of them. All right? They'll try to tell you otherwise. But you and me, we're the right ones here. And remember that I will always love you."_

_Kurt knows he should say,_ I love you, too, _but the words are stuck in his throat, blocked by selfishness -- he doesn't want to die, not today, not ever. He stays silent and protects himself and feels hot, sticky shame, but if Burt notices, he doesn't seem to care. "I love you," he repeats, and Kurt wishes he could hide the words from the camera's sensitive ears and the people controlling them. They are both sliding backwards down a hill of marbles, spilling into an abyss, losing their feet -- and everything they could ever have held onto is spinning out of reach._

\- - -

Kurt's days become a string of beads, little glass orbs of promise and bread-smell strung along skeins of pervasive disinfectant and boredom. And worry, near-constant worry. At any moment, he knows, all of hell could come down on his head. It's a thin and tenuous line he walks between safety and punishment.

But he's so, so glad he does.

The bus breaks down the day after he learns Blaine's name. He's on it when it happens: a shudder, a sputter, gruff curses from the driver, and the weary wheels dragging to a stop. Kurt's used to walking -- cars are reserved for the wealthy and the city-employed, and the public transportation system is nothing to write home about, obviously -- but his heart sinks anyways. He's halfway from the bakery and by the time he gets there, it'll be too dark to walk home safely. He'll have to go straight to his house now.

The cold and the wind and the darkening sky don't bother him nearly as much as not seeing Blaine the day after they exchanged those lovely, dangerous words. He prays that Blaine won't think Kurt's been scared away, walks home, and spends the night in a cauldron of light dozing and worry.

The bus safely makes it to Kurt's favorite corner of sidewalk the next day. He runs to the bakery and bursts into the heat and the smells, flushed and panting and hoping to God that Blaine didn't lose faith in him. The line is relatively short, but feels like infinity; he smears his sweaty palms on his jeans and tries to catch his breath. And then, like he's sensed the slice of cold outdoor air that heralds Kurt's arrival, Blaine looks up from the cash register. Their eyes meet, and briefly, radiantly, helplessly, Blaine smiles.

Caught up in the light of that grin, Kurt smiles back. A stranger crosses between them, and when he moves aside, Blaine has caught himself and is working the buttons once more. But the shape of that smile remains: an imprint like a sunspot whose happiness is so bright that Kurt can't make it fade.

There's another note in Kurt's pocket. When he reaches the counter, he mixes it in with the coins in his pocket and clutches the handful tight. "Hello," he says.

"Hello." Blaine's fingers tap and tilt against the tabletop, staggered motions like keys pressed flat on a piano. Kurt finds his gaze indelibly tied to the column of Blaine's throat where it presses against the collar of his uniform; he swallows hard when Blaine catches him staring and struggles not to grin, a faint blush coloring his face as he tugs his bowtie absently. "You come here often, I've noticed. Where were you yesterday?" -- so controlled, so nonchalant. Kurt wants to vault the counter and hug him and hold him and rest his chin on the top of his head, and the desire is dizzying and confusing and strong and pleasant. And forbidden, of course, of course.

Once upon a time, confessions of love were followed by happiness and rejoicing, or anger and rash decisions, or sadness and betrayal. Not all reactions were beneficial to those involved, but at least they were _allowed_.

"The bus broke down. I'm here now. And hungry. Three wheat?"

"Of course." Blaine ducks his head in a way that twists Kurt's stomach and accepts the coins and the folded slip of paper, which he efficiently tucks into his sleeve as the money splashes into the drawer. He leaves to fetch the buns from the back room and returns with a cautious wrinkle in his brow and more small, sloped words written on the inner rim of a bag containing three piping-hot wheat buns, and so begins a halting, flawed, dangerous, and inconvenient correspondence that looks like it might be the best they'll ever get.

_How old are you? I'm 21._

**_I'm 20. I live in Fabray District._ **

The next day, it's so bitingly cold that the bakery is empty. Kurt, a few young snots, and two mangy cats are the only ones determined enough to brave the chill in exchange for baked heaven.

_That's pretty far from here. I live in Puckerman. Do you like books?_

**_I love books. I wish we didn't have to burn them all._ **

There's something new in his wheat buns. Something sweet and nutty and good and very, very different. He wonders at its flavor, at what it would feel like to kiss a boy with lips that taste the same.

_There's a boxful in my backyard. My dad buried them there when I was five so I could read them someday. My mom loved them, too._

**_Your parents sound so cool. Are they rebels like you? Like us? And do you like the maple-walnut buns? I figured you could use a change of pace._ **

The maple-walnut buns are the best things Kurt has ever tasted.

_YES. They're DELICIOUS. Thank you so much! Those cats liked them too. And they were, but my dad died three years ago, my mom when I was four._

**_I'm sorry._ **

The winter wind has been eating away at Kurt's fingers. They're chapped and sore and bleeding at their split callouses, and Blaine must notice when Kurt hands him the customary money and note because he finds ten Band-Aids in the bottom of the bag.

_Don't worry about it. They loved me, and I loved them, and they taught me about soulmates, so I'm happy for their lives more than sad about their deaths._

**_Soulmates. I like that word. Is that what we are? (The Band-Aids are because no hands should look that destitute, especially ones as beautiful as yours.)_ **

Does he have beautiful hands? Kurt flexes his bandaged fingers as he waits in line the next day, glances up, and catches Blaine looking away quickly.

_I think it is. Remind me to tell you the soulmates story sometime. Well, anytime I have a death wish. (Thank you so much. I really ought to take better care of myself.)_

**_I really love you._ **

It's dumb and it's crazy and it's true, and Kurt looks at the near-stranger he loves back in a way explicable only by a bedtime story and tries to convey with his eyes all the words he cannot fit onto a finger-sized slip of paper, cramped with handwriting. It's difficult, but, well, he's had practice. And something in the twitch of Blaine's shoulders tells as he turns away tells him he was successful.

The next day, he makes a choice. He takes a step. It is a shaky step, and a tentative one, and one that could end in disaster, but he squeezes his eyes shut, ignores the abyss, and takes it anyways:

_I don't understand how, really, but I love you, too. Some things aren't meant to be understood. Is there any way you could sit down at a table with me? Please? I want to ask you something._

Blaine emerges from the back room with the buns, talking rapidly over his shoulder to an irritated-looking blond guy with flour to his elbows. "Please, Mr. Evans," he begs, "just for a few minutes or something, this customer has a complaint and I have to talk to him about it, he comes here all the time and we can't afford to lose anyone else..."

"Fine, Anderson." Sam stomps over to the counter and slams his hand on the drawer's catch, releasing a small mushroom cloud of white powder. "But I'm expecting compensation. Of a monetary kind."

"Yes. Good. Okay. Thank you." Blaine rings up the buns and brings them to where Kurt perches on the last two inches of a hard plastic chair, legs crossed. For the first time, Kurt sees him without a counter blocking half of him, and... he's _short_. Kurt never saw him as a giant or anything, but he never realized the height difference between them -- which isn't really too pronounced, but... it's cute. It's really cute. He suppresses a giggle and fights to keep his face as stiff as possible.

There's a question in Blaine's face, but he hides it and asks a different one. "You wanted to see me, Mr....?"

"Hummel. Kurt Hummel." It's so weird. Kurt has to wear two faces and think two thoughts at once. "Would you sit down, please?"

Blaine does. He folds his hands on the dingy wood of the round little table for two, and they're so close that Kurt can feel their warmth. He wants to grab them and clutch them and kiss them. He wants so bad it scares him. "Is this about the buns?" Blaine asks. "I'm sorry. We've been experimenting. There's been a shortage of wheat flour lately... We do what we can, you know."

"No, it's not, actually." Kurt forces his eyes and mind away from the curls escaping the smother of gel at Blaine's hairline, breathes deeply, refocuses. "It's just that the bus has been rerouted recently and now runs an almost direct path from my house, in Fabray District, to this bakery in the mornings. And the other day, I heard you complaining to your coworker" -- he indicates Sam, taking orders with a surly frown -- "about how long and difficult your commute is. I..." _Inhale, Hummel. Exhale. Inhale. Keep the mask. It's fine if he says no, it's fine if he's not ready, you love him but you don't know him..._ Blaine's eyebrows have risen almost imperceptibly. He knows what Kurt's getting at. "I have a rather large house just down the sidewalk from the bus stop, and if you wanted to... to move in with me, for convenience, I would be willing."

Situations like this are hardly unusual. Almost everything is done for convenience these days -- times are tough; every citizen with vacant pockets and tattered hems scrabbles to make the road as smooth as possible -- and Kurt has neighbors who are roommates and strangers all at once. If there's a house with an empty attic closer to the supermarket than your current home, why not ask to move in and save yourself the time? Chances are he and Blaine will be the only ones who know their shared residency is anything more than a business arrangement.

If he agrees, of course. If.

Kurt sees a crease of uncertainty on Blaine's brow and feels his chest deflate. But then Blaine says, "But moving all my things in the dead of winter would take so long..."

 _Oh._ Hopeful, Kurt answers, "There's still a bed left over from when my... when Mr. Hummel lived with me. It's in fairly good shape. And I'll help you transfer your possessions. It's the least I can do if you'll be helping with the rent."

Blaine ponders the proposition a minute more -- _is his hesitancy real? Staged?_ \-- and Kurt takes a nervous bite of maple-walnut roll as he waits. "That sounds good," he says finally, nodding. "The shortened commute will be such a blessing. I haven't gotten enough sleep in years." His businesslike tone slips; he bites his lips and looks sideways at the floor, small movements Kurt already knows to associate with shyness. Softly, meeting his gaze, he asks, "Shake on it?"

Kurt's breath leaves him. "Y-yeah." Blaine's warm brown hand slips into his pale bandaged one, and for the first time since age seven, Kurt holds someone else's hand instead of his own.

\- - -

_Burt Hummel knows that he's dying, and Kurt Hummel knows that he's dying, and it's harder for Kurt to accept than it is for Burt. The day after Burt hit a whole plethora of strikes against the city, a white envelope appears in their mailbox. Kurt finds it, sees the city's official seal, and hands it to Burt without a word, though his hands tremble, very slightly._

_"Just as I expected," Burt says calmly, reading it. Kurt wants to know what it says and dreads what it says all at once and both so badly that he's almost sick. Though that could also be because of the fact that his dad is going to die and holds the bold-serif letter proclaiming that in his two big hands. Seeing Kurt's face, he explains, "They're giving me a week."_

_"Why would they do that?" Kurt asks despite himself._

_"Seein' if I plead for mercy, I bet." Burt sets down the creased paper gently and crosses the dining room to the camera, the very one that caught yesterday's outburst, the one that witnessed Kurt's "insanity" rearing its head for the first time. "Listen to me and listen to me good," he says to it, stepping onto a chair so he's eye and eye with its glistening lens. "I don't regret what I did. I don't regret it one bit. My son's a grown man now; he can survive on his own. The bone you gotta pick's with me. And I know you want me to cave. You want me to yell an' beg an' take it back," he growls with utter disdain, "and I'm not going to. I'll take my week of waiting, and then I'll take whatever death you've got in store for me, because I had a long, good life filled with beauty and love, even when this blasted city tried to take all that's bright an' beautiful away from me. So do what you want, an' watch your little screens, an' tap your little headsets an' be confused when the man on Death Row isn't scared at all, 'cause I'm a Hummel, and Hummels never give up."_

_He's been so strong for so long, and he won't cave in to uncertainty now. Kurt wishes he could say the same for himself._ Oh, Dad _, he thinks with that same sick, swirly feeling as he felt yesterday afternoon._ Please. They might spare you if you just take it back. Please...

_He's still naïve enough to think the city might spare Burt Hummel._

\- - -

Blaine moves in the next day. Kurt gives him his address, and the following afternoon, Blaine has a small, ratty suitcase stowed under the counter, waiting. Waiting for the bus that will take both Blaine and Kurt to a house that is now _theirs_ instead of _his_ and will finally have someone filling the bed vacated for the last time by Burt Hummel.

Kurt buys his buns and shares one with the cats outside the bakery. One of the animals is the one from one of Kurt's first visits, now significantly larger and sleeker thanks to his generosity, and the other is boa-tailed and unfamiliar. Kurt tempts it free from the shadows with bits of bread until it warily allows him to scratch its lousy ears. "I thought cats didn't eat bread," Blaine murmurs into his scarf as the cat turns genial and displays its tummy for petting.

"They do if they're hungry enough." Kurt sits back on his heels and lets the cats scamper off, and like a charm, the birds begin to infringe. He shakes his head. Sometimes I feel like Snow White, honestly. Scattering crumbs, he and Blaine walk to the bus stop, the suitcase jolting over the cracked pavement every few steps.

On the bus, it's standing room only. Kurt squeezes into an awkward slot between two overweight, middle-aged men, and Blaine stands across from him, unfortunately wedged between an old man muttering to himself and a woman asleep on her feet and snoring loudly. The face he pulls when the woman's drool drips on the cuff of his jacket is so disgusted that Kurt has to quickly muffle his laugh with a fake cough. He and Blaine slip each other sideways looks as the bus bounces along, and Kurt finds it harder not to smile with each and every one.

 _I'm going to share a house with this man. This man with flour dust on his nose and a stranger's saliva on his sleeve and the best smile I have ever seen. This man who risks death to love me._ Dramatic, yes, but also true. And Kurt's always had a flair for the theatrical.

He can't remember the last time he was so happy.

\- - -

_The week that follows is the worst in Kurt's memory. He finds himself staring at his dad like he wants to catalogue everything about him: every laugh line on his face, every uneven stitch in his clothing, every absent gesture, every expression. Everything that makes him him. And maybe he does. Maybe it is deathly important that he remember the precise location of the bubbled scar on his chin and whether he holds his coffee mug in his right hand or his left. Maybe every cough and every footstep matter. Maybe, one day, the city will realize that it was wrong to kill Burt Hummel, and they will need every hue, every shade, every line and blink and fleeting smile from Kurt's memory to reconstruct his father from the ashes and bring him to life again._

_Burt turns to see Kurt looking at him intently for the hundredth time. "I'm still here," he says -- gallows humor. He won't be much longer, and so Kurt looks._

_On the first day, Burt calls Kurt to his bedroom. "Somethin' I gotta show you, kid." To Kurt's surprise, it's a book, large and flat and roughly square with a flower pressed inside its fabric cover. "I didn't burn it," Burt says gruffly, handling it with incredible care, "'cause I couldn't bear to part with it." He doesn't say "bury" because the city still doesn't know about the milk-crate coffin in their backyard. They hope. "It's the wedding album of your mama and I. Near the end, I think we stuck in some pictures of you. Come here. Look."_

_Kurt will spend a week doing little other than looking and desperately bargaining with God; he might as well start now. He sits on the creaky old bed, shoulder to shoulder with his condemned father, and gazes at pages and pages of a young Burt and a living Elizabeth, beautifully dressed and happier than any two humans Kurt has ever seen. It's the first time he's seen his mom since he was four, and the sight of her radiant face pulls his memories into focus like a camera lens twisting. She is amazing. He touches a glossy cheek, smaller than his fingertip, and sees himself in that smile, those ears, those eyes._

_"I wanted this for you," Burt says. "Woman, man, who cares? I wanted you happy. God. We were so happy." His calloused palm brushes a small swatch of white silk, sleek and cool as cat's fur. "We were so happy."_

_On the second day, Burt burns the book. It looks like it kills him to do it. He kneels by the fireplace and flicks a match onto the fabric cover, and Kurt stands by, helpless and hurting right along with him. "Gotta do it," Burt mentions, watching as it's engulfed. "We don't have a choice."_

_"Why not?" Kurt wouldn't mind keeping the book. He knows that since it's been in the cameras' eyes, it's too dangerous to hide or read again -- but couldn't he keep it as a "warning" to himself, so he doesn't go down the same road as his father? Surely the city couldn't punish him for that._

_"I don't want you to be tempted, and I don't want you to come to my end." Things are ending, Burt is ending, and Kurt stares at the already-cooling ashes with his heart in his mouth, afraid to open his lips lest it tumble out and be the end of him, too._

_On the third day, it rains, and Burt goes out and watches it sheet down and then says, "Well, nothing better to do than go to the shop." He blows steam from his coffee into the street as Kurt stares at him incredulously. Glancing at him, he asks, "What?"_

_"You've got five days to live and you're going to work?" Kurt cries, his voice rising to the brink of hysteria._

_"Sure. Why not? It's not like sittin' around and watchin' you worry's gonna be any more fun." He takes a swig and then sighs. "Sorry," he says quietly over the downpour. "I know you care, and I appreciate that, kid. But there are some things you don't understand yet. You want me to spend these... these days doin' somethin' special, don't you?" Kurt nods, crestfallen. "You see, Kurt, I've had... I've had a special life. I've done more good things than some people in this city will ever experience. I don't need a burst of fire. I don't need memorable last words. When you've pretty much been slated to come to a bad end your whole life -- dont deny it, Kurt -- there's nothing left to do... but wait." Burt turns to go inside. "And there're some things I'd like to say to the guys at the shop, anyways."_

_On the fourth day, Kurt wakes at four to a house that's empty. He sprints through the halls with panic high in his throat, slams open doors, runs out onto the street and turns in helpless circles._ What if he gave up on the waiting? What if it was too much? What if he turned himself in? _The image of a defeated Burt Hummel walking himself to the low-slung, hulking building at the center of town is too much for Kurt, who claws his hands at the legs of his jeans, fighting his imagination._ No. No, Dad would never do that. He's not actively fighting because he doesn't regret what he did, but he'd never go to headquarters himself, never...

_He looks up to see Burt strolling down the sidewalk as casually as though he went out to buy milk. "Dad!" Kurt gasps, running to him. "Dad, why did you -- where did you -- I --"_

_"I'm sorry. I probably shoulda left a note or somethin'." Burt has a flower in his hands. A daisy. He twirls it idly as Kurt tries to make sense of what happened._

_"Where did you go?" he asks finally._

_"There was someone I had to talk to."_

_"At four in the morning?! Who --"_

_"Yes. Your mom."_

_"... Oh."_ Oh _._

_"These were growin' on her grave." Burt lifts the flower. Its soft petals tremble in the early-morning light. He laughs a little. "Daisies. They were her favorite. She an' all the others from the early days, they're buried right by the dump. Ugly soil, contaminated soil. But these little flowers grew there anyways. Your mom, she could make anything happy. Anything." He tucks the daisy behind Kurt's ear. "They're gonna cremate me," he says, as offhand as though stating the weather. "Put the ashes somewhere nice, all right?"_

_On the fifth day, Kurt asks, "Is there anything you want me to do?"_

_"Quit worrying," Burt answers immediately. "You'll die young."_

_"That's not funny, Dad. That's not funny at all."_

_"Sorry." But he's grinning. How is he grinning? How is he happy? He has today, tomorrow, and the day after. How? "But I'm not all that young, anyways. Hmm..." He ponders. Then, suddenly, he says, "Sing."_

_"What?"_

_"I haven't heard you sing in years. That angelic voice. If I had a dying wish, it'd be to hear you sing."_

_Kurt sings the entire day. Ballads. Nursery rhymes. Hymns from back when church was allowed, back when he was very small and he understood nothing but the music. Everything he can think of, everything he can put to music -- he sings it all. He sings until his throat is parched and pebbled and his mouth tastes like paper, until Burt folds his hands around a glass of water and gently orders him to stop. "Thank you," he says, eyes too bright. "Thank you."_

_On the sixth day, Burt sits in their backyard for hours. It's summertime and the grass is uncut. Kurt watches from indoors and occasionally comes out to check on him. "Are you all right?" he asks, knowing it's he himself who's not all right at all._

_Burt smiles mistily and waves him off. "I'm fine. I'm fine." He inhales deeply and exhales like he's releasing years of age and stress -- he looks younger, somehow, and peaceful. "This city used to have beautiful air, you know that? Cleanest anywhere. But pollution took over and things changed..."_

_Kurt comes out one last time, doesn't say anything, just watches his father's broad, flannel-covered shoulders rise and fall gently. Eventually, without turning around, Burt says, "Come here."_

_Kurt doesn't resist. He comes out from the house's shadow and drops down beside his dad. The grass prickles his palms and the hot air crackles in his nose and the skin at the base of his neck is sweaty, and Burt puts his arm around him and pulls him close, and suddenly Kurt is crying. "Shh, shh," Burt says, soothing, rubbing his back as Kurt buries his nose in a shirt that smells like smoke and comfort. "You'll be all right. It'll all be all right."_

_On the seventh day, Kurt wakes crying on a pillow already damp. He sits up and scrapes the crust from his eyes, and he's confused for maybe two seconds before he remembers: Today is the last day. The very last. Tonight, policemen will arrive to wrestle Burt into a rusty old cruiser and take him to the city headquarters, and there they will kill him. Tomorrow morning, for the first time -- for the first time ever -- Kurt will be well and truly alone._

_He steps out of bed and finds his way by touch through the halflight and into Burt's room. "Dad?" he asks, ashamed at how his voice is already ragged. But he feels like a ghost made of fear and dread and pain, and frankly, he doesn't have the strength to sound chipper. "... Daddy." He is eighteen years old and feels eight._

_Burt rolls over and blinks up at him. "Kurt?" he asks groggily, and then, for the first time, something like apprehension settles onto his face. "Oh. Good morning."_

_"Dad --" Kurt shakes his head. His face is crumpling inwards and there are tears on his neck and his hands feel nerveless and when Burt sits up, he throws himself at him. "Dad," he sobs, his entire body shaking. He is breaking. The last person on the planet who loves him is leaving him for good, and he aches, he hurts so physically bad that it stuns him sideways, and he is breaking. "Dad, I don't want you to die."_

_"I don't want me to either." Burt holds him close. He is warm and solid and there, and for all the time he's had to prepare, Kurt cannot imagine a life without him. "We've got to do things we don't want to sometimes, don't we?" He nudges Kurt back and puts one hand on either side of his damp, broken face, regarding him seriously. "I have to die, and you have to live without me. And I daresay we'll both do a damn fine job."_

_"I can't," Kurt confesses. His eyes are gumming again, and he hates it, and he hurts, and he can't stop, because his dad is dying and fine with it. "I can't, I need you, Dad, the city hates me --"_

_"You're strong. You've got your mom in you, Kurt. And me. You'll survive." Burt presses his rough lips to Kurt's forehead, and something in Kurt snaps a little further and hurts a little more. "Be brave, all right, kid? You're better than any of them."_

_"Can't you run?" Kurt asks desperately. He's grasping at straws. He's grasping at everything. "Can't you escape? Go. Before they come, you can --"_

_"Cameras, Kurt." He indicates the little black boxes in their lofty vantage points. "Policemen. There's no gettin' out." He says it gently, kindly. "They gave me a week, Kurt, and what a week it's been. I wouldn't trade it for anything. I got to visit your mama and hear you sing and relive one of the happiest days of my life. What more could I have asked for?"_

_Kurt shakes his head mutely, still held in Burt's warm hands. He can't talk, can't think, can't even say goodbye. No. No, he can't say goodbye. He has had eighteen years with his dad, and he wants a lifetime, and it's not fair, and he is being torn to shreds and his throat aches and he is shaking, he is shaking all over._

_"You know, Kurt..." Burt lets his hands fall to Kurt's quivering shoulders. He holds them tight and squeezes lightly. "We used to go to church, you and your mom and I. I know you remember 'cause you sang some of those... those Jesus songs day before last. Well, we were never really religious, exactly" -- he chuckles -- "okay, we weren't at all. But there were two things that really stuck with me: The idea of a better place after this rotten one, which I believe with all my heart, and a story._

_"That story was the first one in the Bible, and it said how God made the world and everything in it in a week. And it was a weird story and kind of a crazy one, but I liked it anyways. Still do. And you know why? 'Cause that God guy didn't take the whole week. He took six days to be busy an' run around an' make the animals an' all that. And then, on the last day, He rested."_

Oh, Dad. I don't want to say goodbye.

_"Today's my last day, Kurt." Burt touches Kurt's chin. Kurt gets the stinging sense that his father has been watching him all week, too, mapping out his every move and angle to carry in his memory when he dies and maybe even take it with him afterwards, into the better place he believes in so strongly. "This is the end. And I've had six amazing days. So today, let's rest."_

_Kurt doesn't really stop crying. There are tears slipping down his cheeks even as he makes breakfast and eats breakfast and sits with Burt on the porch, watching the last few minutes of sunrise and all the sideways stares of the neighbors who've definitely heard about their plight by now. He leans his head on his dad's shoulder and knots his own hands together and remembers: Burying books. Practicing statues. Holding his hand, getting in trouble for it. Coming out in the least comfortable way imaginable. Being labeled insane. Bad things, painful things, horrible things... and, wedged between the dark times like little beads of light, good things, happy things, lovely things. Being held. Being sang to. Being hugged. A not-language of hidden touches and angled eyes and words with two meanings, or three, or four, and love hidden under snow but still growing, still preparing for the day it can burst free._

_Bad things and good things thrown together, a flavor as bitter as it is sweet. So many memories. Eighteen years' worth. And decades more that will never be made. Kurt cries and doesn't try to hide it, and Burt rubs his back like he can't stop touching his son for a moment, and they watch the sun rise and then begin its slow and fateful descent._

_They see the cruiser coming. Its patriotic lights are on and flashing, but it meanders slowly around the corner. Kurt's chest constricts so suddenly he gasps. "Dad!" he cries, and Burt's hand grips his shoulder hard before releasing again._

_"Hey. Hey. Calm down. You're fine. You'll be fine." Kurt is crying and choking and shaking his head and feebly protesting, and this is the moment he's been expecting and the sunlight is so bright and it hurts him viscerally and physically, and Burt turns to him and hugs him so hard his sobs are smothered, and the car comes nearer and Burt lets go. "I love you," he says firmly, calm to the bitter end. "I love you. Every day since your birth I have loved you. Don't let them take it away. Don't --"_

_The car halts and its doors fly open. Kurt shudders around his hollowing heart and Burt's face falls. "I love you," he says as two burly men jump out and stride over. "I love you," he says as they climb the porch stairs. "I love you," he says as they grab his elbows and rip him away from Kurt, and as Kurt falls to his knees and stands again and runs after them, making bad noises, strangled noises, wailing noises, he says, "I love you," and they drag him to the car though he isn't fighting them, "I love you," and they find handcuffs and lock him into them, "I love you," his eyes never leave Kurt's, they shove him into the car and he yells "I love you!" and the doors slam and they drive away and Kurt runs after them and he hurts like punches and stabs and he makes a horrible, painful, shattering sound and runs until he reaches the end of the street and the car disappears and he collapses and finds out he has no tears left._

\- - -

Working Blaine into Kurt's life and home is easier than he expects. It's like the only things added are the toothbrush beside his own in the bathroom, the second place set at the table, and the other human heart in the night-dim house that beats as strongly as his own. Blaine makes his own breakfast, does his own laundry, and runs on his own schedule. To outsiders, they are no more than strangers, strangers who happen to often be in the same room, strangers who keep polite but impersonal conversation and lead separate lives -- and what are they really? Kurt doesn't know. They perfect offhand and casual discussion in the first few days; they fit the roles of strangers-acting-lovers-acting-strangers seamlessly. But are they really playing pretend, or are they as foreign to each other as any housemates in the city? He hardly even knows this man. Knows how he feels about him and how he makes him feel, and his name and age and that he loves books -- but what else?

But maybe it's just his stubbornness that calls the doubt, because after a week, they're back to forgetting lines and stage directions, two actors forced onto a set too small and strange for them. Blaine relaxes until he's the man Kurt remembers, smiling at every customer and their personal rainclouds. Kurt wakes one morning to find him in the kitchen with flour dusted in his hair and all over the counter. He nods to the oven with a smile that's sheepish and pretty and and almost too large and says, "Bread's almost done. I... I wanted to test out a new recipe for the bakery. Do you mind being a lab rat for breakfast?"

"I don't. I don't at all." Blaine smiles again, reckless and bright, and practically _dances_ to the oven when it alerts him to pull out a loaf of bread in one of Kurt's rusty tins, punched delicately outward to billow over the sides. Blaine's wearing his work uniform, his sleeves are rolled to the elbow, his hair is freshly but lopsidedly gelled -- curls struggle from the glue over half his head like krakens from the deep -- and he's attractive in a way Kurt can only pretend to understand. He wonders if Blaine looks at him and feels hot and cold the same way Kurt does, if the other man finds Kurt's hairspray-and-kitten-fur bedhead adorable or just messy. _If only I could ask._

With the pride and skill of a master craftsman, Blaine cuts a hearty slice of the steaming bread, spreads it with butter, and presents it to Kurt on the flats of both hands. "Bon appetit."

Kurt takes it with a shiver -- _it's not cold in here, what... oh_ \-- and considers its pebbled, grainy texture before biting down. Whatever doubts he has are immediately erased. The bread is absolutely delicious. His tongue curls with pleasure; he closes his eyes and hums his appreciation. "It is really, _really_ ," he emphasizes, " _REALLY_ good."

Blaine beams like an eight-year-old with straight As, and Kurt's heart drops a step on the stairs as he grins tentatively back. He wishes he could share Blaine's enthusiasm, but the city's made him wary. He suspects Blaine's past was better than his own, wonder if Blaine resents him for his cautiousness. "Really?"

"I just said 'really,' like, six times, Bla -- uh, Mr. Anderson." _Crap. Crap crap crap crap crap._ First-name familiarity is so rare in this city. Suspicion. Not allowed. Dangerous. Crap. Kurt digs his fingernails into his thigh beneath the table and takes another bite. Blaine struggles to keep his toothy happiness intact, but it slips sideways and breaks. He stands with his back against the counter and stares at his loosely fisted hands like they hold the ribbons of a mask.

Not for the first time, bitter helplessness boils in Kurt's throat. _How am I supposed to have a relationship with someone I can't even call by his first name?_ But he's not going to to give up. Not now. Not ever. _I made it work with Dad; I can make it work now_. When Blaine's eyes find his, he holds them and says quietly, forcefully enough so the words he says bend and warp around the words he means: "This is the best bread I have ever tasted. In my life." _I love you._

Blaine swallows, blinking rapidly, and says, "Thank you very much. ... Mr. Hummel. Very much." To Kurt's surprise, an answer in the not-language he once spoke so fluidly with his father becomes evident in Blaine's cultivated gaze and bitten lip: _I love you, too._

It's enough to bring that shiver back again. Kurt looks at his hands trembling around the coarse bread and thinks, _We have a connection. We're talking without words..._ They're not really, of course. Kurt is guessing from the blush Blaine can't control and the twitch in his fingers, and signs can be misleading. But as he watches, Blaine inhales shakily and, almost too quick for Kurt to catch, mouths the three forbidden words.

Unsure if he saw right, Kurt tips his head just slightly to the side. Blaine nods.

 _We're talking without words, and Blaine loves me_.

It's been a while since Kurt felt love for someone living. He's forgotten how strong it is, how rough and uncomfortable and intrusive and difficult, and also how rebellious, and how emboldening. He finishes the bread and takes his plate to the sink. It's inches away from Blaine, who tenses like he knows he's in Kurt's personal space but doesn't want to move. Carefully, Kurt rinses the crumbs from the plate and reaches behind Blaine to grab a towel. In his moment of recklessness, he lets his hand linger just a moment on the curve of Blaine's back, just long enough to feel his jolt of surprise.

He knows the cameras' eyes as well as his own. They have imperfections. Blind spots. Small secret places where their gazes don't overlap, areas where a roadblock the size of one short adult man is enough to allow one illegal touch, one concession. Don't abuse them, don't overuse them, and nobody will notice, none but you the wiser.

Blaine looks at him and Kurt looks back and words flow and boil and ram heads between them, begging and scratching and pleading and fighting to be spoken, and Blaine takes a shuddering breath and says, "I guess I'll make a few loaves at work, then," and Kurt answers, "You should," and forces himself to tack on a "Mr. Anderson" instead of an "I love you," and they go their separate ways, the way they have since since birth and might until death.

Things like this happen more and more frequently as the weeks pass, though never so often as to be detected and certainly nowhere near as often as either of them wants. They speak through looks and double meanings and, as Kurt wordlessly teaches Blaine the cameras' Achilles heels, touches that span heartbeats and stolen breaths and butterfly blinks; Kurt finds the tender part of Blaine's wrist when they pass in the hallway, and ever since Blaine realized the cameras can't see two-thirds of the underside of the table, they have eaten breakfast with their ankles touching, sensitive bone on sensitive bone. It's not enough and it might never be, but they're good at playing pretend. There is water in the soup and sawdust in the flour, so why not a not-language in two strangers who might be in love? What's wrong with making things last as long as they can?

So over time, Kurt quits wondering if he sees something in their sideways relationship that Blaine doesn't. It seems like every time the doubt begins to rise, there is something new to anchor him. Big brown eyes holding his a moment longer than necessary. Another kind of bread, baked with all of the love Blaine cannot otherwise express. The ghost of a hug or a kiss or a hand in his: fingers on his elbow, toes brushing his calf, a smile for his benefit, all enough to call up a spark that lights a desperate, needy, frightening fire inside of him. He starves for more, he starves for everything -- every touch, every word, everything. He wants to know the man who might be his soulmate by more than his smile and his hands. He wants words. Memories. Conversation. Everything.

He drowns in the not-language and clings fast to the hope that moments add up to a lifetime.

\- - -

_The ashes arrive a week later. Well, it's probably been somewhere around a week. Kurt hasn't gone to work since that day, or slept more than an hour at a time, or changed his clothes. He drifts through the house, too big too empty too cold, and thinks in monosyllables and measures time in breaths too loud too many, why is he still breathing, why isn't his dad? The cameras are watching; they must see him so hollow and faded; they must know he feels -- felt -- feels? the illegal emotion, they must always have known, why don't they arrest him, why isn't he ashes himself, why isn't he as dead as he feels? He doesn't understand. He doesn't understand at all. He is five years old beside a grave of books, there is mud in his hands, he doesn't understand._

_The only reason he checks the mailbox is muted, abstract curiosity. It's the beginning of the month and his pills haven't come yet. Were he a little less shaken, he would realize that the city no longer desires to dull the mind of Kurt Hummel. They have studied him long enough to deduce that taking his father would remove any threat he ever posed._

_The plastic bag inside is stretched around gray-black ashes so that it's as thin and clear as a soap bubble. Kurt takes it in his pale hands. It is light, so much lighter than it should be. The bag should be straining and quivering under the weight of the life Burt Hummel lived, so heavy and full of love and accomplishments. It weighs much less._

_He walks the roads to the edge of the city. Policemen follow but don't detain him. He finds the high electric fence with its crown of barbed wire and comes as close to it as he dares. Somewhere nice, his dad had said._ This is for you, Dad. _He unseals the bag, dips his hand in, and throws the first miasma of ash into the air. Wind immediately rises and snaps the wisps away into the distance and the hot, dead grass that fades into infinity._

 _He never could escape the city in life, but at least he's escaping it in death. Kurt strews ashes and feels some semblance of awareness return to him with every handful._ This might be his lungs. This might be his hands. This might be his heart... Lungs that will never breathe again, hands I can't hold, an ash heart mingled with the ash blood it once pumped. _And finally the shock and breathlessness iced over his mind melt, and grief burrows in, poignant and stinging like thorns, to set up its long-standing home in the chambers of his unburnt heart._

_Kurt finishes the sad little ceremony and stands there, staring down at the empty bag with the faint, ominous buzz of the fence in the background. He should say something, probably. Anything. The guard he can see down the trail of the fence watches him, too far away for his face to be distinguished, and makes no movement to shoo him away. It seems the city is playing a crafty and delicate game with Kurt Hummel, though the dice are weighted and the hands grossly uneven. He will lose -- but at least they are giving him a chance to prove his desire to win._

_He should say something. He should write a speech. He should write a book. He should write a library. He should grab the fence and let its current shock his heart into silence. He should fall to his knees and cry._

_He tries to speak, but how can words encompass the life and times of Burt Hummel? The vast, windswept sadness inside him makes him feel so old and alone._

_He pockets the bag, whispers, "Goodbye," and leaves._

\- - -

"So... Have you always lived on your own?"

Kurt raises an eyebrow. "I might have been incredibly mature for my age, but no, I wasn't self-sufficient at, say, eight years old."

Blaine laughs and scratches the back of his neck. "I mean, did you go to boarding school with the rest of the kids? You know, when they made the switch."

"... No. I didn't, actually." Blaine looks at him curiously from his spot in the kitchen, a broom working rhythmically and efficiently in his hands. Kurt almost asks, "Haven't I told you before?" before he remembers that, yes, he has -- in one sentence on a note -- and that Blaine's just using an acquaintance's idle inquiry to mask a friend's honest wonder. They've become so skilled at sideways interaction and oblique comments and a not-language so familiar it might be their native tongue, and it's still not enough, but it's good. It is good. Kurt shares a house and a life with Blaine Anderson; those ambered brown eyes and that eager smile are for him; the world doesn't know that, but they do. And Kurt still feels a spark each time Blaine's finger strokes his palm beneath the table, a mockery of the teenage trope but so heartfelt, so pure.

It's not much. It's not enough. But it is good.

"Really?" Blaine asks, stilling the broom. Errant clouds of ever-present flour dust settle onto the floor. "I thought it was required by law."

"There were exceptions. I was young and, well, not entirely stable, so the city allowed the man who was once called my father to continue to be my guardian until I was old enough to function on my own."

"Didn't he live here? With you?" His forehead wrinkles as he empties the dustpan into the trash can. "What happened to him?"

Kurt struggles to remember what exactly he told Blaine that day, what Blaine is pretending to be ignorant of and what he honestly doesn't know. "He did, but when I was eighteen, he, ah... He had... a moment of relapse." Blaine's eyes go wide as Kurt squeezes his shut. The three-years-old monster dormant in his chest raises its head and sinks achy needle teeth into the back of his throat. "The cameras were on, and I don't know what caused it, but, he... He..." His hands twitch, and he slides one into the other, holding so tight his knuckles go white. "He told me he loved me," he finishes, adopting the most disgusted tone he can, though the words tremble. "He told me he loved me and then he went on a crazy rant, and then a week later they arrested and killed him."

After a minutes-long silence, Blaine says, "That must have been difficult." Kurt's eyes are still closed, but he can hear that the other man fights to keep his voice normal. And the double meaning is painfully clear: _It must have been difficult for you to be thrust into the world without a guide. It must have been world-shaking to have your dad killed for loving you._

"It was." _It was, and it really, really was._ "But, well, I managed. And I attended the boarding school in Puckerman District, but only as a day student, of course. What... what about you? You were a boarder, I assume?"

"Yes." Blaine lets the broom rest against the wall and knocks the faucet on, wetting a rag for the counters and table. They split chores and housekeeping between them -- the kitchen, which is by now primarily Blaine's domain, is kept spotless by his careful upkeep. Kurt glances at a splash of soup beside his bowl and smears it off with his sleeve. "When the law was passed, my parents handed me to the principal without a second thought. Rule-abiding citizens to the very last." He doesn't sound bitter, and his eyes and mouth are placid, but he wrings the rag out with slightly more force than necessary. "No illegal confessions of love there." The edge of the rag tears. Blaine swears quietly and begins to buff the countertop.

"That must have been difficult." Blaine's troubled-water gaze flicks up and then down again. _It must have been difficult to leave the family you so obviously love,_ Kurt thinks. _It must have been world-shaking for them to want you to._

Blaine shrugs. "It was worth it."

 _Can lies ruin a person?_ Kurt wonders. _Can years of saying the opposite of what you want to wear you so thin the sun shines through you?_ Blaine's mouth is a thin, flat line, and he scrubs the counter like it has done him a great wrong. It's been only months; it still surprises Kurt how easily he reads Blaine's body language, how natural it is to talk to him even when they're acting strangers. Affection flares up in him, hot and fierce and bruising, and he imagines taking the rag from Blaine's fists and kissing his tense wrists, holding him close until all the fight leaves him. _Oh, Blaine._  

"Did you get a good education there?" Kurt asks, meaning the school in Fabray District. It's a horrible comfort and the best he can do.

"Yeah." Blaine's back is to Kurt and his cooling soup, and his shoulders slump as he traces circles on the counter. "It was good, I guess." He rinses off the rag and pauses to gaze out the kitchen window at the backyard, where shoots of spring-green grass raise their heads amidst the debris left over from winter. "They didn't have much by way of a music program, though, and that bothered me."

"My school didn't either, and that bothered me too," Kurt says, surprised. "I wanted to sing in a choir or something. Music was my passion."

Blaine's head is still turned, his face in profile from Kurt's perspective, and a hint of a smile curls his lips. "For me, it was the piano," he says quietly. "Neither of my parents played, but I had a neighbor... I think she was arrested eventually. But the sounds..." His fingers flutter on the edge of the countertop, illustrating his point. Kurt suddenly realizes the meaning behind that absent habit. "Oh, well." Dismissively, Blaine dips the rag in water again and brings it to the table. "There's better money in baking than music," he finishes, and Kurt can see how much it hurts him.

Kurt doesn't answer, but as Blaine sweeps his rag across the table, he turns subtly, shadowing his soup from the camera peering over his shoulder. Blaine realizes his aim and seamlessly works the rag closer until it's in reach. Softly, Kurt covers Blaine's hand with his own, warm skin on warm skin, and squeezes.

A moment in which they're joined, a breath, a blink, a heartbeat, and then they separate. Blaine's hand returns to its damp rag and Kurt's to its partner in his lap. Camera-pleasing normality swallows the moment, and Blaine drops the rag in the sink and rinses his hands, and Kurt makes an offhand comment about the warming weather, and when their eyes meet, he simultaneously keeps talking and finds himself lost in all the words they cannot say.

 _One day, I'll tell you I love you,_ he promises, although it's dumb and dangerous and thank God he's gotten better at controlling his expressions. _Aloud. No note, no touch. Words you and the cameras can hear, and to hell with the city_ \-- every thought these days is dangerous -- I _'ll fight them or run away or something, anything, because you haven't heard the three forbidden words from someone who loves you so much they could die for you, and I am your soulmate_ \-- dangerous, beautiful -- _and I love you._

\- - -

_The mechanics shop Burt worked at offers Kurt his place in the coveralls and grease, but there's no way in hell he's taking it. He has too many good memories gone bad of the smell of oil and sweat clinging to his dad's strong hands. Everything that reminds him of Burt is still painful like skin peeling away, so he sends in applications to a couple alternative jobs the moment he regains the presence of mind to spell his name. The janitorial slot doesn't even ask for an interview -- not enough takers, he supposes -- so it's an obvious winner. He starts the Monday after he throws the ashes and finds that, to his surprise, the world continued to turn while his stood frozen still._

_Prolonged exposure to disinfectant eats away at his skin; his pale, soft hands go cracked and calloused. He finds himself staring at them sometimes, unnerved by how worn they are compared to the rest of him. Or perhaps they're in better condition. The past ten years of his life have taught him to see both sides of everything._

_It's not good money, nowhere near what his dad made, but it's enough for him to get by once he sells their nearly-junk truck and forgoes a few meals a week to keep the electricity. And the menial labor busies his hands, if not his mind. Somehow, the near-continuous motion works free the knots of grief and anger in his mind; they never fully unravel, but at least he's making progress. There are still times when remembrance rises up like a wave and knocks his balance off-center. There are still moments when he thinks he hears a familiar gruff laugh or sees broad shoulders in a flannel shirt and inflates with foolish hope before falling again. But he's all but invisible to his coworkers' eyes, and if any level of saltwater can dilute industrial bleach, he hasn't hit it yet._

\- - -

It's so hard to know when they're pushing their luck to the breaking point. Do they talk too much like friends? Is Kurt smiling too large? Is Blaine leaning in too enthusiastically to wait for Kurt's response? How many hip bumps and ankle nudges and wrist touches does it take to corrode their chances of slipping notice? How many notes can they trade as they cross in the hallway before one of them forgets and reads one with an expression inappropriate for a grocery list? If their double life is hide-and-seek, are they hiding too close or counting too long? If it's tag, who's two steps ahead? Who's falling behind? Is the other team just waiting for them to get tired? What happens if they trip?

It's so dangerous. It is so, so dangerous. Kurt knows it, Blaine knows it, and by unspoken agreement they do it anyways.

 ** _Life is about taking chances,_** Blaine writes one day, unprompted. He has perfected the art of turning his doodles in the margins of the newspaper into words, then tearing them off in secret and crumpling them so fast the motion goes unnoticed. From there, sneaking them to Kurt is child's play. **_But is this one worth it?_**

 _You're worth it. We're worth it,_ Kurt answers on his favorite medium, the back of a receipt. _And I swear to God you only ask me those ridiculous philosophical questions to hear me say how much I love you, Blaine Anderson._

**_Sue me._ **

_All right. I love you._

Is there still doubt? Sure. But Kurt's also unsure of his bus driver's ability to steer and whether he'll get breakfast tomorrow -- even when he pools his income with Blaine's, money is tight. And to be frank, that doubt is a lot more justified than his occasional and quickly dismissed musings on the validity of Blaine's love for him.

For example, there's the time he came home late from work in a fiery mood after being yelled at and jostled around all day and was so annoyed that he offered Blaine only a short, insincere "hi, how are you?" before stomping upstairs to bed. He woke up hours later with a rumbling stomach, and feeling like a kindergartner after a temper tantrum, he tiptoed back downstairs for a midnight dinner -- only to find Blaine barely awake but functioning well enough to tug pans of bread from the oven, claiming they were his head start on the next day's workload. "Of course, you can have a slice if you want one. I think you came home too tired to eat," Blaine mumbled, and it was all Kurt could do not to kiss his tired eyes.

And then the anniversary of his dad's death, when Kurt spent half an hour arguing with his boss and still couldn't secure the day off -- mourning is anti-city, because what reason is there to mourn someone you don't love, and none of Kurt's other excuses would suffice. He was ready to storm out of the room in a huffy, near-tears rage when his phone rang. It was Blaine. "I'm in Sylvester District and my car broke down," he said without preamble, loud enough for Kurt's glaring boss to hear. "I was doing a delivery, and I have to get it done. Is there any way at all you could pick me up? I'm so sorry for the inconvenience." His boss reluctantly agreed to let him go since he had no way of knowing that Blaine wasn't in Sylvester and neither he nor Kurt had a car, and Kurt found a handful of early-summer flowers in someone's garden to toss over the fence, meeting the gaze of the same guard who once saw him scattering ashes before hurrying home to a man he could thank only with his eyes and a smile.

And the time Kurt caught the spring flu and didn't have the money to buy medicine, so Blaine pretended to be sick too in order to buy Kurt the pills and say they were for himself.

And the time Kurt mentioned he liked the reddish tone of Blaine's gloves and found them tucked into his own jacket pocket the next day.

And the time Kurt dropped and broke the mirror that belonged to his mother, and Blaine spent his lunch break gluing it together so well the cracks were invisible.

And all the times Blaine's notes brighten a thunderstruck day, and all the times his hand nudges Kurt's in secrecy, and all the times Kurt hears him humming a song Kurt once called his favorite and fluttering his fingers on the countertop -- a private habit whose story only Kurt understands. And all the times some small action or casual word has reminded Kurt that they are distant, but they are also in love.

Kurt holds the memories in his arms and carries the world on his shoulders, and in this way, he is balanced.

So the doubts are few and the happiness is quiet, and they play their dangerous games and think their dangerous thoughts and act like strangers, and it feels giddying, the getting away with something forbidden, until a sealed envelope arrives in their mailbox.

Kurt's restocking the kitchen when it comes. Usually it's Blaine's job, but Kurt's felt like a woefully inadequate friend-boyfriend-paramour-what-are-they-even recently, and it's the best way he can think to pay him back. There are sacks of flour, weighty and malleable in his hands, cartons of sand-shelled eggs, sticks of butter in opaque wrappers, bags of sugar that dribble sweetness from the seams -- he licks his palm clean of brown sugar granules, half guiltily -- and everything necessary for Blaine's experiments. He considers attempting to crack Blaine's elaborate code of what goes where in which cabinet but decides against it. Blaine's a little territorial over his kitchen, after all.

He hasn't gone to the bakery in weeks. There hasn't been a real need: Blaine lives with him, obviously, and their house is almost constantly wreathed in the smells of things baking. If Kurt's craving carbohydrates, chances are a loaf came out an hour ago and another will be done on the hour. So he no longer takes the bus with Blaine and now gets home a couple hours earlier. He glances at the clock as he unloads the groceries onto the counter and goes to the pantry for a slice of maple-walnut bread. _Blaine should be home by now,_ he thinks, suddenly worried. _Oh, God, I hope nothing happened. Oh, God, what if he's been arrested, what if they found out, what if they're coming for me_ \-- Just like that, drop-of-a-hat panic pins him on the spot, a reminder that the facade is not nearly as foolproof as he'd like to believe, and he stumbles in his haste to get to the door.

When he flings it open, Blaine's strolling down the sidewalk, a bundle of envelopes in his arms. "Mr. Hummel?" he asks in confusion, seeing him there. "Did something happen?"

"No, I --" Kurt sucks in lungfuls of air and wills away the sweat gathered at his hairline. It takes moments. "No, I'm fine," he says finally. "I thought I -- I thought I heard a siren or something."

"Nope." Blaine tilts his head with a quizzical half-smile. "Just me. Here. I walked down and got the mail." He begins to sift through the letters, reading the addresses. "Two for you, one for me, junk, one for m --"

"Mr. Anderson?" Kurt asks in bewilderment. Blaine has stopped moving. He stares at something in his hands with a face blank of all but the first strains of shock. "Mr. Anderson," Kurt repeats, worry rising again. "Is something wrong?"

When Blaine looks up, his eyes are huge and round and so scared. Kurt's instincts beg him to rush forward and take Blaine into his arms. He fights them and descends the porch stairs slowly, gingerly, like Blaine is a skittish animal who could bolt -- and from the tension in his hands, pulling and crumpling the mail, and the pure terror on his colorless face, he might. "Let's go inside," Kurt suggests. Blaine doesn't acknowledge his proposition until Kurt takes him by the elbow in the most impersonal way he can manage and tugs him indoors.

Only then does he see the city's official seal on the back of an envelope in his best friend's hands.

"... Oh," Kurt says, suddenly lost.

"It's got my name on it," Blaine says, quiet, broken. He cradles the letter like it might bite him. His hands are trembling.

"Well, you should open it," Kurt encourages after a pause, though his brain is spinning furiously, trying to make sense of the situation. Haven't they been careful? Haven't they been smart? Haven't they been strangers in the cameras' eyes? What if they've caught them? Why Blaine and not Kurt? What if --

Hot, surging defensiveness, fierce and brawny, overrides his panic. _What if they want to kill Blaine? I won't let them. I won't let them take him --_

_It's not like I could stop them. Oh, God --_

The man he loves more than anything creases a nail through the wax seal and pops the envelope open. He's shaking so badly that he can't work the letter free. Kurt takes it from him, slips it out, and fights the urge to shred it instead of giving it back. Blaine unfolds it, lip wet and bitten, and begins to scan the bold-serif words. He reads the letter while Kurt reads his face; when he finishes, his shoulders slump in relief, but his brow stays furrowed and dark. "W... what does it say?" Kurt asks tentatively.

"I --" Blaine flicks the letter in the air, runs a hand through his hair in resignation. "They're moving me." He repeats himself with a half-laugh of disbelief. "They're _moving_ me."

Looks like they pushed their luck too far after all.

"Moving you... relocating you? But -- but how? Why?" Blaine shrugs wryly, leaning against the counter of the place he calls home. Kurt can't take it in. He was expecting death, but this hurts a lot more than he thought it would. "I -- I don't understand. This is a perfect living arrangement, we've had months to refine it, we're doing better than most of the people in this city, this isn't fair --" He throws his hands in the air and stalks in circles while Blaine strokes the letter thoughtfully with his thumb. He knows why, of course he does. Somewhere, somehow, at some point in time, they gave the screenwatchers cause for suspicion. At least it wasn't enough cause for a more stringent punishment. Finally he grabs a chair, straddles it, and rests his chin on its back. Blaine looks at him, and his mouth quirks in the way it does whenever he finds Kurt cute. Still cross, Kurt asks, "Where?"

"Sylvester," Blaine answers, monotone.

Kurt sucks in a breath. "That's completely on the other side of town."

"I think," Blaine says, pushing himself off the counter and walking to the window, "that that would be the point." He sighs. "I'll miss it here," he says softly, looking at Kurt so he knows what an understatement that is. "It's been nice."

"I'll miss you," Kurt answers, equally quiet. "Your, uh. Splitting the cost with you has helped a lot." Blaine chuckles at nothing, shaking his head, and goes to tuck the letter into his pocket. Kurt detains him: "When do you have to leave?"

"Oh, yeah. Tonight. I'll stay at a hotel til I can land an apartment, I guess." He glances at the darkening sky and stretches so hard his spine cracks. "Better start packing now."

"Tonight," Kurt repeats.

"Tonight." Blaine swallows hard and turns to the staircase. "I'll be down in a little while."

Tonight. Blaine is leaving tonight. Blaine, the bakery boy, the best friend, the soulmate, is being forced to walk out of Kurt's life, for now and maybe for good, tonight. There will be no hand to hold beneath the table, no heavenly scent of bread to greet him when he wakes, no quiet, solid comfort of a friend and lover in the same room, the same house, the same life, his love reluctantly locked away but there. The channel of notes will end abruptly; the not-language of touches, glances, and emotions too strong for words will fall apart. Their relationship will fall apart. And Kurt's fairly certain he will fall apart, too.

He looks at his hands. Thanks to Blaine's gentle insistence, he's taken better care of them recently. They're strong and lean, and the skin is whole, if dry. What will happen to him when his fingers fold in with no one else's to stop them? Will he go back to clinging to his own hand like a drowning man to a savior's?

He's come to depend on Blaine, he realizes. Not just monetarily, though the added income has helped, even with two mouths to feed. But problems and anger and bad days have been so much easier to handle with Blaine's kindness and his soft brown gaze. He thinks of the bread at midnight, the mirror, the gloves. Small gestures, hints of affection that added up into love enough to sustain him. And now -- gone. The desire to sprint upstairs and throw his arms around Blaine is nearly overwhelming.

 _I don't want you to leave. Please don't leave. I love you. I need you. Did you notice all the ingredients on the counter? Please don't leave._ Were he not cautious, anxious, afraid little Kurt Hummel, he would crouch by the man he loves and say it all to him, every word he has written and been too scared to write, the verbal translation of a thousand tiny brushes and nudges and smiles and looks and blinks. As it is, he doesn't want to die today. Or a week from today. He notices he's still holding the slice of bread and takes quick sparrow bites, nuts in his molars like pellets of guilt.

A little while later, Blaine descends the stairs slowly. He has his patched and patchy coat on, his beaten-up suitcase in one hand, and his letter in the other, and a sad, helpless look on his face. Kurt's heart clenches. "Ready?" he asks quietly.

"Yeah. I think I am." He's remarkably composed, especially considering Kurt's hands are twitching where they dig into the meat of his crossed arms. He takes one last look around the kitchen, taking it all in, and when he registers the groceries on the counter, his calmness breaks, allowing Kurt and the cameras a moment's glance into the turmoil behind. "Thank you," he says, touching a bag of flour and coming back with the dust of white Kurt knows so well. He looks at Kurt. "For everything."

"You too." Oh, he's already lonely, he's already missing him, it hurts, it hurts so bad. He's supposed to endure the rest of his life this way? Without collapsing? "Take care out there."

"You too." He pauses. "You know those gloves I gave you a while ago?"

"Oh. Oh, yeah." Kurt's heart falls a little further. He turns to look for his coat and the red gloves in its pocket, the red gloves he wore every day until it was too hot to wear them, until his larger hands stretched fabric made for Blaine's smaller ones to the point that they fit perfectly. "I'll find them," he mumbles. "Thanks for letting me borrow them."

"No -- Mr. Hummel, no. You can keep them." Kurt looks at Blaine with his eyebrows raised. "It's the least I can do for all the hospitality you've shown me," he finishes, almost smiling though his eyes are so wide with longing. "And they always did fit you better anyways."

Kurt curls his hands around the gloves in the pocket of his coat. Blaine's gloves. His gloves. "Thank you very much." Some small part of Blaine, more substantial than Kurt's memories, will survive his time living with Kurt. For this, he is more grateful than he can express.

Blaine nods, and there's no reason for him to stand there, but he does for a minute anyways, drinking in Kurt as Kurt drinks in him. He looks at Kurt like he doesn't want to miss a single sunstreak or prematurely gray hair or freckle, like holding him in his gaze will hold him close forever, like if he looks long enough, he will never forget a thing. Like tracing the line of Kurt's lips with his eyes will cement in his memory every smile and pout and grimace and helpless, scrunchy-faced giggle and kiss that could've happened but didn't, like he can give flesh to the image of the man in his mind if he watches his pulse jump in his wrist and his soft neck. Kurt, in turn, goes from Blaine's gelled curls to his ridiculously long eyelashes to his throat and shoulders and broad chest, to his trim waist hidden by the folds of his coat and the ankles that rested against his for so many meals. Every inch, every line, every nuance is heartwrenching because there is so much of him that Kurt wants so badly to hold and kiss and explore, and he was never able to, and he will never be able to, and goddammit, if he starts crying now he'll be arrested in minutes.

"Goodbye," Kurt whispers, and it feels like betrayal.

"Goodbye," Blaine murmurs, eyes lowered.

But the instant before he goes, Kurt leaps forward. "Wait!" he says, too loud. "You -- you forgot your scarf. It's summer, I know, but it's yours, and I don't want you to -- to have to come back all the way from Sylvester --" He's babbling as he tugs one of his own scarves off the hook by the door and very nearly rips it, but suddenly it is very important that Blaine have something physical to remember him by. Suddenly, it is the most important thing in the world.

He hands it to Blaine and sees the confusion on his face smooth over. "Thank you," he says softly. "I almost forgot." He swallows, thick and hard, and their eyes meet one last time -- honeyed brown with winter-sky blue -- before he goes, closing the door behind him, the finality of a chapter of Kurt's life slamming shut, and he is alone.

\- - -

_Kurt's walking to the bus stop one autumn morning when he hears the shouts. It's a crisp day, frost like a faint skin over everything outside, and his breath stains the air before him in clouds and columns of smoke. For the most part, things are peaceful; he has his thoughts to himself. Well, he always does, really. It's one of the few upsides to a life of solitude. But then the shouts come and everything shatters._

_"Stop her! Stop her!" Pounding footsteps tattoo the street. Somewhere out of Kurt's vision, car doors slam, and a babble of voices swell under the yells. "She's getting away! Go -- stop her --"_

_Suddenly, something catches the corner of Kurt's eye, a fleeting movement, panting breaths, desperation so strong he can practically smell it. Confused, he turns and sees a young woman with dark hair darting down the road's meridian, as quick as a rabbit from a hunter and obviously as terrified -- she pauses for just a moment, hands on her knees, to suck in air, then makes eye contact with Kurt, who's the only one on the sidewalk, and starts running again. She's almost to the end of the street when what looks like the city's entire police force comes pouring in from the other side of the neighborhood. "Ms. Lopez!" someone bellows. It's a mess of cars, bodies, shouts, intrigued civilians on the sidelines. "Ms. Lopez, if you surrender now, we will take you peacefully to the courtroom for a fair trial!"_

_Ms. Lopez, as she's apparently named, looks at the policeman like he's lost his shit, and in that moment two more cars speed in behind her and box her in. She sees them and visibly deflates. Kurt feels a pang of pity for her: She's been caught, and now there is no hope. But the runaway is a spitfire to the very end. "Like hell, you bastards!" she screams back, dodging the policemen who jump from the cruisers. "You lying sacks of shit! You'll kill me like you killed my mother! My friends! You'll kill me for loving her!"_

_A pause, like the policemen are trying to decide whether or not to agree. "... Surrender, and you will be peacefully removed."_

_"Fuck you!" she screams and bites the man next to her on the hand. Apparently that's enough warning for them. They quit trying to subdue her and back off, but they form a ring around her as she spins and spits like a caged animal. "I will not go peacefully!" She glares venom, snarls. "I will not lay down and die!" He doesn't know her, but Kurt sees the pride and defiance in her face and wishes he did. "I love her, and I will until I die!"_

_"No! Santana, no!" An answering yell, higher, softer, from the crowd of spectators. "Just go with them, Tana, please, they might not kill you, Tana --" People begin to turn, searching for her. Kurt watches Ms. Lopez's (Santana's?) face and sees the wildness morph into something different. Something softer. Something sad._

_"Britt!" she calls, suddenly surging forward, landing punches on the policemen who come near, shrugging off their clutching hands. "Britt, go! Go! They'll get you! Go! I love you!"_

_"Santana, no --"_

_"I have to!" Her voice breaks and then returns, fierce and hoarse as ever. "Go -- I love you --"_

_"I love you!" comes the response, and suddenly the police turn to search the rabble for the other half of the crime, the woman in near hysterics because of something illegal, something despicable. She's dragged to the front, slight and blond and struggling to no avail. "Santana!" Her blue eyes are huge and panicked. Kurt shrinks back against the fence behind him. "Santana, run --"_

_"You will be arrested!" shouts one of the policemen holding her arms. "Ma'am, if you continue to act like this, she will be killed and you will be taken --"_

_"Santana --"_

_But there's no response._

_Santana has pushed free and leaped the hood of a car, and she now is streaking away on the other side of the barricade. Kurt finds himself spurring her on in silence. But suddenly she stumbles. She falls. There is red spreading across the bodice of her dress. Only then does the pop of noise, white and sudden, register, and a policeman near the front of the cheering crowd lowers his gun in satisfaction._

_Britt is screaming and wailing and tearing at the hands that hold her, but she is locked into harsh metal handcuffs nonetheless. And just like that, the show is over. Some navy-shirted men shoo away the crowd; others haul the body of Santana Lopez into a black bag they have prepared; the rest push Britt into a car and shut the door, and suddenly Kurt is winded and alone on the sidewalk, late for work and the witness to a murder._

They didn't even get a week _, he thinks, still in shock, as he walks the rest of the way to the bus stop._ They didn't get a week like they gave Dad. They shot her... There were people cheering when they shot her. _And he sprints to the trash can beside the bus stop and vomits into it. He has to tell the mildly concerned onlookers it was his breakfast that made him sick._

\- - -

Loneliness is exactly the same as Kurt remembers it.

It's cliche, but for the first few days, he finds it impossible to accept that Blaine is gone. He keeps expecting to hear his hum in the other room or see his coat on the hook or feel the slam of the door, heralding his arrival; he even opens the pantry at one point, knowing Blaine always does his huge batches of maple-walnut bread on Wednesdays, and feels like he's been punched in the stomach when all he finds are the ingredients he bought that day, stuffed haphazardly in, flour bumping shoulders with baking soda because Blaine isn't there to put them in their proper places. It just doesn't make sense that all trace of someone who was such a solid part of his life for so long could be obliterated in one evening, with one letter. Then again, Blaine entered his home quietly and easily; it only makes sense that he would leave the same way.

And it's not like _every_ sign of him has disappeared. It's the warm north side of summer, and his hands itch and sweat in the gloves, but he wears them anyways. And then there is the glued mirror with his light fingerprints, the unmade bed with the smell of his gel and skin, the flour dust crusted permanently in the cracks of the counter. In some way, wonderfully, inexplicably, Blaine is still there.

Kurt breathes him in and misses him with a sadness too big and old for his thin young body.

He visits the bakery a few times, but Sam works the counter now, as Kurt thought he would. After all, the bakery's in Puckerman and Blaine's in Sylvester; he could hardly be expected to make that kind of journey twice a day. But it still hurts, and standing among strangers panting and bemoaning the heat while waiting for bread so hot it burns their tongues, Kurt feels even smaller and sadder than before. "Do you still sell maple-walnut buns?" he asks one day, and Sam looks at him with a muted flicker of recognition before answering, "No, that was Anderson's thing, and he's gone."

That was Anderson's thing, and he's gone.

Blaine's gone, and Kurt's alone.

It hurts, it hurts so bad, the pain is persistent and aching and sometimes it empties him so viscerally that the only thing dragging him from bed is the need to make money. Occasionally he eats far more than he should or than his body's used to and ends up vomiting it up and going mealless for the day or two until he can afford food again. It is not a life he ever imagined himself leading, save for immediately after Burt died. It's what makes him realize that he never really expected to meet another person he cared for as wildly as he did his dad. It's what alerts him to the fact that Blaine is one in billions, maybe one in infinity, and the glass shards in his stomach and the chambers of his heart prick him more with each passing day: _You shouldn't have let him go. You should have fought. You should have said that you love him..._

Once with his dad and once with his love: two attempts, two failures. Both times, the fear of death and pain worse than death shut his chirping little beak.

_You should have fought, you foolish little bird, flying away at the first sound of gunshot..._

_Self-preservation at its finest, Hummel, you moron._

_But really, it would've just gotten him killed,_ he reasons with himself as days turn into weeks turn into a month without Blaine's notes or hands or eyes or voice, and possibly Blaine too. And where would they be then? At least now they have the chance to correspond in secret or something, though he knows any letters from either side would rouse suspicion instantly, and with the warnings already piled behind his name, he can't afford to push his luck at all.

He already did, after all, and look where that got them.

One month without Blaine hurts like one week without his dad. Probably because they knew each other so much less than eighteen years. Probably because Blaine is still alive and breathing somewhere, far out of Kurt's reach -- he's pondered driving to Sylvester and dismissed it as the stupidest idea imaginable. Probably because his dad was his dad and Blaine is his soulmate.

He counts the days, hurts more instead of less with each one that passes, and eventually stops surreptitiously scanning crowds on the bus or in the grocery store for a smile as familiar as the back of his hand. He stops hoping. It's like being a six-months-younger Kurt Hummel, stepping into a bakery for the first time and locking eyes with a man he cannot have. It makes sense, he tells himself, to quit longing for something that has no chance of happening. Because it won't happen. Right?

That's what he thinks until someone knocks on his door one evening. That's what he thinks up until the moment he discovers that someone is Blaine.

Kurt stands in his doorway in jeans and a shirt and skin too tight for his thundering blood. It is Blaine. It is Blaine, fully, in the flesh. Blaine. Blaine with the gelled hair and the tattered suitcase, Blaine with breath he is obviously holding and wide, uncertain, beautiful eyes. Blaine.

"Kurt?" he asks tentatively, quietly, one hand fluttering up and then back like he wants to touch Kurt's cheek, and the use of his first name stuns Kurt a little further. "Kurt, are you... okay?"

His instincts kick in before his brain, and he asks too bluntly, "What are you doing here?" Maybe he's offended because he has just worked himself through the misery of acknowledging the impossibility that is suddenly possible. Maybe he is simply in shock. Maybe his mind has gone dull with breathless happiness.

"I..." Blaine looks unsure. He glances over his shoulder at the vacant street like he's contemplating retreat.

"No, that's not what I -- that's not what I meant -- I -- God, Blaine, it's so good to see you." His voice trembles at the edges as he says the name, the forbidden name, and Blaine looks back at him, face bright and hopeful. "I just -- they moved you?"

"Yeah, they moved me." Blaine's hand tightens around the handle of his suitcase. His entire face goes hard and grim. "But, if you'd have me, I was thinking it's about time I moved back."

Kurt stares. Most of him can't believe what he's hearing. Blaine flagrantly disregarded the city and the unspoken law in even _coming_ here, and now he wants to commit a felony that warrants arrest or even death? Something Kurt's learned over his years as a citizen is that you don't disobey those wax-sealed envelopes. Those wax-sealed envelopes dictate every angle of your life. The goody-goodies have none. Some people, the unlucky ones, have an entire handful. Kurt has enough to paper a wall, and with every one he receives for minor offenses that somehow never culminate into major ones, his maze grows smaller and more confusing until he is bumping his hip against a law at every turn.

The other part of him wonders if maybe it's time to break away. Touch his right hand to the wall and feel his way out. Climb the walls and run to freedom.

It was bound to happen eventually. Hasn't he been slated for a bad end his entire life? Wasn't he born with the mark of the Hummels on his forehead? Isn't he next and last in a short line of failed insurgents?

Blaine gazes at him, waiting for an answer.

 _If I take this man into my home, I could die. I could have a week max and then I could die_. The words don't feel right. Kurt, die? He is twenty-one. He is indestructible. Then again, that's how he saw his dad, too. _I could die... Blaine could die._

 _No. No. No, Blaine will die._ He swallows humid summer air. _He made that choice by coming here. They will take him, no matter what. Even if I let him in for a few days or a week, the might spare me. But Blaine... he's on express instruction to be in Sylvester. Why would he come here unless he loves me? Oh, God. He's going to die. His core is ice. Does he know? Does he --_

He looks at Blaine. Yes, he knows.

 _He loves me. He is my soulmate. He took this chance because he loves me. He is here because he loves me. He -- oh, God, he is so scared._ Looking harder at Blaine, he can see it now: the tremor in his lips, the dip of his Adam's apple, his blinks, too many and too fast. _He's terrified. He's scared I don't want him. He's scared I don't love him enough to take him in._ His chest swells, rough and hot _. Oh, God, I love him._

He is still confused and uncertain; there are holes in the story; he could die.

He steps aside and lets Blaine in.

\- - -

_The murdered girl and the person she loved are on Kurt's mind for weeks. He has nightmares that shoot him awake with icy sweat and a migraine, clawing at sheets that entrap him, gasping for air like a fish on land. In them, he stands beside Santana Lopez in her barricade of cars and muscled chests dressed in navy. It's nighttime instead of afternoon. He tries to copy her proud stance, her spitting words, but the barrels of guns face him down and drown him out. "Help me," he tries to say. His jaw may as well be welded solid. "Help me."_

_She glances at him and pauses in her manic screams. "You're on your own," she tells him calmly as she steps to the side, leaving him bare to the hatred and fury of the crowd, howling for his demise beyond the circle of cruisers. "You always were."_

_The bullet enters first her chest and then his, and Kurt wakes to his own death every night, disturbed by the cold wind that cycles through his lungs, by the silent gunshot, by the fact that in every dream, Britt is screaming Santana's name, but no one ever calls for him. No one ever yells that they love him. He dies nightly for two weeks solid and never once is he missed._

\- - -

And when Blaine is inside, the house Kurt has lived in all his life suddenly feels like home.

It's like he left a man-shaped hole in the place, just his height and width and depth, and now he has filled it and everything is better. Kurt relaxes a little more with each passing moment. His suitcase propped against the wall. His coat on the back of a chair. His gentle smirk as he opens the pantry and clucks his tongue at the mess. It's everything he missed, every small action he never thought he'd see again, and it is so impossible and wonderful that he feels warm to his fingertips and wants to take Blaine into his arms, to feel if he's sunny and buzzing too. It's the most basic kind of happiness: nameless, faceless, muted and ecstatic -- the joy of someone who brings joy just by their presence. Kurt folds his arms against the desire to touch and doesn't stop smiling for a minute.

The cameras can probably see his improper happiness. Fuck the cameras. Kurt is on the edge of something monumental; he can feel it in the gnaw and pull in his belly, in the tension in his calves. _Is this how Dad felt before he snapped?_ he wonders as Blaine opens the fridge and searches for milk. _Primed and antsy and desperate for release?_ It's a heady, exhilarating sensation. It's also what killed Burt Hummel, he reminds himself, but somehow this doesn't matter to him. Adrenaline? Ignorance? Or has he already accepted what is to come?

Death still scares him -- everything scares him -- but he has Blaine, and they are invincible.

Blaine drains his glass, sets it in the sink, and turns to Kurt with his mouth open to ask a question. He closes it again. "... Kurt?" he asks, brow furrowed. "You look... odd. Are you okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine." Maybe it's the adrenaline and maybe it's inherent recklessness and maybe it's Blaine, but with a decision as fast and uncalled for as a bolt of lightning, he says, "Will you come to the backyard with me?" Blaine's eyebrows lift. "There's something I've been meaning to do for a long time."

And it's dangerous, and it's stupid, and it's right.

_"The reason I buried the books instead of burned 'em or somethin' is so one day, when you're a big boy, you can read 'em for yourself. In secret."_

_Well, you were half right, Dad._

"Come on." In full view of the cameras, Kurt grabs Blaine's hand. There's a moment's pause. Then Blaine grabs back with a disbelieving smile, and it's a sealed pact, a promise, the first giddying step towards the edge.

Kurt leads him to the garage, where the shovel has sat untouched for sixteen years, and then to the backyard and the coffin full of books.

"I never told you what my dad and I did with our books, did I?" he asks, tone businesslike as he sinks the shovel through dry grass and into rich, moist soil. "You said you burned yours, and I guess that's what most families did. But, well, not us." The pile of unearthed dirt grows larger by the moment while Blaine looks on in silence, hands in his pockets. Saying the words is liberating and so, so good. There are a billion things locked inside Kurt Hummel, things he is willing to open only to the man at his side, things that are years old but feel trembling and wet-winged and vulnerable and new. This is the first of them. He grins half-manically at the ground and shovels out another shower of clods. "Dad saved them for me. When I was five, he and I buried them in the backyard at nighttime, long before the cameras were installed." The glass eye of the black box just underneath the overhang of his porch glares at him, and Kurt shivers, knowing what he's doing is the greatest of all the offenses ever detailed in bold-serif print in a wax-sealed envelope.

"What books were they?" Blaine asks. "We didn't have many forbidden ones. Dad's a doctor, so mostly they were medical journals, and I'd hazard a guess that they're still on his shelf at home."

"Storybooks," Kurt explains, and he can see the pieces fall into place in Blaine's eyes. "Things Mom read to me when I was little. Before she... before she died."

"How did she die?" Blaine asks hesitantly. Kurt realizes only now that there are continents they could never cover through notes and casual conversation. The shovel grates on pebbles and roots as he jams it deeper.

"City took her," he says flatly, then pauses, shovel limp in his hands. "I'm sorry. I just... I just miss her a lot. Is that dumb?" he asks. Suddenly it is very important for him to know. "Is it dumb that I miss her though I only knew her for four years?"

"Kurt, she's your _mom_." Blaine's fingertips touch Kurt's forehead, gentle as moth wings, and brush his bangs out of his face. It's so compassionate that Kurt feels it in his chest. "It's not dumb at all."

Their faces are so close that Kurt can feel Blaine's breath, the shovel stilled between them. The closeness is unnerving. Thoughtlessly, Kurt jerks away and starts digging again. Questions about what could have happened, what _should_ have happened, boil and froth inside him, but he shoves them aside. There's a more important matter at hand. He avoids making eye contact with Blaine -- he looked crestfallen in the instant before Kurt moved -- and feels a glimmer of satisfaction as his shovel strikes wood.

"That's them," he says, breathless, shy. "The books. I -- oh, God." The enormity of what he is about to do bears down like a tidal wave, ribbed with eddies of _bad idea, worst idea, put down the shovel, this is suicide_ , but he sucks in air and stays afloat. "Blaine," he says, and Blaine moves closer by his side, wordlessly understanding. He weaves one arm around Kurt's lower back and holds him.

"You can do it," he encourages in an undertone, hand warm where it curls around Kurt's side. "I'm right here."

"Don't leave."

"I won't. We're doing this together."

 _Together_. Kurt inhales as hard as he can and clears away the rest of the dirt. Blaine kneels and fights the crate with him, digging his fingers under its rim and heaving at it until it pops free of its grave like a cork from a bottle, a corpse brought to life again. "That," Blaine notes as they examine it, Kurt tapping dust from its cracks, "is a lot of books."

At first, Kurt can't say anything. The crate is weathered and worn in every way he remembers, the hot afternoon sunlight throwing its grain and crevices into high definition, but it's smaller to him now than it was when he was five, and he's having difficulty imagining the first four years of his life crammed inside, every memory of his mother filling in the cracks. He touches its dirt-cool wood and pictures smaller hands, paler hands, helping to pack in books as thick and solid as bricks. Blaine's hand rests on his shoulder across the crate. "Want me to go find something to get the nails off?"

"No, we can just -- just pry the lid off with the shovel." Blaine nods and helps him wedge it beneath the lid's lip and lever it off in a cascade of splinters. The books are nestled inside, exactly how Kurt remembers: a mosaic of bold, clamped-fabric covers, the titles imprinted in gold that shines in sunlight. They are history, artifacts from an era of Kurt's life that he's not even allowed to speak of. His hands are trembling as he chooses one, lifts it out reverently, and opens it, inhaling a smell that calls up memories from the deepest, darkest corners of his mind.

 _Once upon a time,_ he reads, and then he has to pause to wipe the water from his eyes. "Are you all right?" Blaine asks softly.

Kurt shudders, hugging the book to his chest, and gives Blaine a watery smile. "Yeah, I -- I-I-I never thought..." He closes his eyes, feels his eyelashes drag on wet cheeks. "It's her here," he murmurs, because as he read those four words, he heard them in his mother's voice, "and him," because _"Once upon a time -- that’s how all the good ones start, right?"_ "I'm sorry I'm so sentimental," he adds with a shaky laugh, stroking the book. "I'm just a silly romantic through and through."

"It's not silly." Blaine smiles at him, kneeling there in the dirt removed from a grave dug for books, and reaches tentatively into the crate. "Can I...?"

"Of course. Read one. Read them all. They're beautiful stories. But -- but if you do --" He feels the need to warn him, to remind him of what he's doing, of what they're doing. "You --"

"Kurt," Blaine says, amused although his eyes are too bright, "I moved back in with you. I held your hand. I helped you dig up a crate of illegal books." Strikes one, two, three. "Don't you see?" he says softly. "I want to be with you. Come what may. I'd rather have -- have a short and happy life" -- his voice trembles but stays strong -- "than a long one without any love in it. And I -- I --"

I love you. Kurt watches him wrestle with the words and rests a hand over his on the sunwarmed fronts of the books. They've been unallowed for so long; Blaine's apprehension makes sense, and it doesn't hurt Kurt because he feels the same. "Okay," he says quietly. "In that case..." He searches through the shining titles, finds one, offers it. "Hans Christian Andersen. Maybe a relative?" Blaine rolls his eyes at the joke, but he's smiling. "Some of them are sad, but they're good. They're very good."

With the sun burning their necks and hands bright red, with the camera glaring balefully and uselessly at the splintered remnants of rules, with frightening knowledge that they beat down with anxious giggles and turning pages and words like silk and water, they read for hours. Princesses, knights, stepmothers good and evil; kings, emperors, mermaids, pegasi; valor and wickedness and cunning and, above all that, love -- it all comes to life, familiar and soothing to Kurt, new and vibrant to Blaine. The books stack around them, walls that protect them from the scandalized neighbors who stare in shock and disgust, and they go from kneeling to sitting to sprawling through the grass, laughing, gasping, reading passages aloud. Blaine's reading voice is amazing. Whenever Kurt is overcome by memory and emotion, Blaine takes the book, brushes the tears from Kurt's blurry eyes, and brings the characters to life until Kurt himself can read again.

At some point, Kurt rests the book he's reading on his chest, covers splayed like the wings of a bird, and looks up at the sky. Blaine goes up on an elbow into the periphery of Kurt's vision. "Are you all right?" he asks, trailing his fingers down the book's spine. Layers and layers of paper between them and Kurt still feels a tingle.

"Yeah," he responds, tucking his hands behind his head. "Just... I miss them." It's not what he means to say; he was going to say something about how it's about time these books were saw daylight again -- but this is probably more accurate anyways. "They were such amazing people..." He throat stings and shrinks, but he keeps talking. Blaine's seen him cry more today than he usually does in years. "I wish you could've met them."

"Me too." Blaine lets himself down and rests his temple against Kurt's shoulder. "Tell me about them," he suggests.

So Kurt does, staring up at the clouds scuttling across the sky and holding the hand of the man he is not allowed to love but loves anyways. He talks about his mom first and relays everything he can remember. "She had dark hair," he begins and spirals into halting sentences littered with sniffles that eventually smooth, describing her sweet voice, her smile, the eyes he inherited, the comfort he found in her lap during thunderstorms and scary times, the look of her hands cradling a book while she read aloud, musical and fluid. Then his dad: tall, broad-chested, taciturn, rough but so tender with his son and wife. He mentions going to his mom's funeral and clinging to Burt's hand the entire time. He tells Blaine about the lessons, the pretending, the insanity, the last week -- he has to stop for minutes at a time there -- and the soulmates story, which Blaine especially loves.

"A spark," Blaine muses, lifting their joined hands into the air so that the sun shines through their palms. "Well, he got that right." He pauses, like he's embarrassed, and Kurt nudges Blaine's forehead affectionately with his chin. For now, at least, things are wonderful: Kurt is laying on the grass in a barricade of books, temporarily shielded from the imminent threats of death and destruction enough that he can make himself forget about them, and Blaine is beside him. Blaine.

How is he this at ease with someone he has known through notes and secrets for months and living conversation for hours? Is there any explanation but for soulmates?

"Your parents... sound brilliant," Blaine continues earnestly. "And I can tell they really loved you. I mean..." He laughs, but there's wistfulness there and bitterness, too. "Even just from these books. They must have loved you a lot."

Kurt remembers a conversation from long ago, Blaine tearing a rag, saying, "No illegal confessions of love there." "What about your parents?" he asks, sensing something inside Blaine and straining to break free.

"I don't know. I don't know. There must have been love somewhere in there, right? I mean, they're parents. But it was hard to find. They were... law-abiding."

"Brainwashed," Kurt interjects.

Blaine laughs shortly. "Yeah. Brainwashed. They didn't protest a thing, or even question it. And when they called the kids away to the boarding schools, they were relieved to be rid of me." He shrugs. "I only saw them once after that -- we stayed at school over the summer -- and that was in the grocery store, and they had no idea what to say to me. Barely even recognized me. So, yeah. That's my tragic backstory."

"I'm sorry," is all Kurt can think to say.

"Don't worry about it." Blaine squeezes his hand. "It sucked, but it's the past. I'm here now. With you."

"And we're going to die." Kurt doesn't really believe it. He should feel shock and chaos and terror beyond belief, not this vague anxiety hovering behind the curtain of his mind. It's like he's waiting for a sign, a sentence, a white envelope sealed with wax.

"So optimistic. And we're going to die." Blaine shakes his head, nudging Kurt's shoulder as he does, and voices Kurt's thoughts aloud: "It doesn't feel real, does it? I can't see it happening. I should, but I can't. We're going to die. They'll give us a week, and then they'll arrest us, and they'll take us to headquarters and throw us in prison until they find a convenient time to stick our veins full of poison..."

"Shhh," Kurt says, sitting up. Blaine looks up at him, face light, the horrifying realization still on the horizon but approaching fast. "Don't ruin it."

Blaine sits up too, and Kurt instinctively turns to face him as Blaine does the same, their laced hands propped in the grass. He might have a faint idea of what's about to happen, but if he does, it doesn't present itself. Blaine says nothing. The way he looks at Kurt makes his face tingle and heat like it's a fingertip trailing from his eyes to his mouth and back again instead of Blaine's intense, unblinking gaze. And then suddenly Blaine is so close Kurt can't tell the color of his eyes, and then his eyes are closed and Kurt closes his too in shock and bliss because Blaine's mouth is on his.

It's unrefined, hesitant, and not at the best angle, but it is sweet, and tender, and somewhere in the seam of Blaine's lips are bread and butter and Kurt remembers a moment from a time long ago when he wondered what it would be like to kiss a boy who tastes like a bakery. Then he stops remembering because Blaine tilts his head and presses deeper and all of Kurt's senses have vanished except for touch and feel and sensation and God, he was not expecting this. He was not expecting this at all.

Blaine pulls back, just barely, and the only thought in Kurt's mind is more more more I need more this feels right I need more so he settles his hand on Blaine's lower back and pulls him in, lips confused and teeth crashing, and he feels a smile on Blaine's mouth as he fixes the angle and makes it gentle and right.

At some point, Kurt ends up on his back on the grass, Blaine a warm, comforting weight on top of him, and their kisses -- they're kissing -- are languid and sweet, strung between seconds of space and looks and nervous heat that bubbles in Kurt's chest, immediately tamped down when Blaine's breath becomes his again. "We're so dead," he whispers in utter certainty when Blaine pulls back to touch their noses together.

"Shhh," Blaine says, kissing Kurt's cheek, "don't ruin it," and the rising fear falls again as their mouths find each other.

But Kurt can't hold back his anxiety forever, and when eventually he pulls away from Blaine, it's there, cold and demanding. He turns his head when Blaine tries to kiss him again. "Blaine -- Blaine, we're -- oh God --"

"Hey." Blaine strokes Kurt's hair, ineffectively trying to calm him down. "Kurt, it's fine --"

"No, it's _not_!" Kurt's mouth is still tingling but he pushes himself back, out from under Blaine, who moves aside to let him go. He sits up and pulls his knees to his chest. The sun is lower now, and suddenly the stacks of books around him are ludicrous, as transient as the long shadows they cast over Blaine's concerned face. "Blaine, they're going to _kill_ us! They might have spared us -- the books, you moving, there was still a chance" -- he's lying and he knows it but hysteria loosens his mouth and winds the rest of him tight as a spring -- "but you had to _kiss_ me -- don't touch me --"

" _Kurt_." Blaine's staring at him. "Look me in the eyes and tell me you didn't want that every bit as much as I did. You kissed me back, for God's sake."

Kurt folds his arms and looks away. Shame makes his mouth feel hot and sticky, but the terror overpowers it, the realization that tears into the delicate tissue of his mind, and he says nothing.

"Fine." Blaine's voice is flat and resigned. He rubs his face with both hands and stands up. "If you need me, I'll be inside." He picks up one book, the one Kurt was reading, discarded in the grass, and takes it with him when he goes, leaving Kurt small and alone in a fortress of books that can't protect him from anything.

\- - -

_It gets to the point where Kurt can't sleep for fear of the nightmares. Where he's too scared of the death becoming reality to even lay down at night. Where he discovers that sleeping pills bring a deeper, truer rest that leaves him exhausted but functioning when he wakes, so he drops milk and butter for the expensive medication, drinking water and eating dry bread and falling into what's nearly unconsciousness at night. The dreams don't visit him there._

_Occasionally he doesn't feel like drugging himself to go to sleep, so he takes late-night walks that span as much of the city as his legs can conquer, roaming like a stray dog down unfamiliar alleys. Thumbprints of purple beneath his eyes become as much a part of him as ruined hands and stubble he can't find the focus of mind to shave off._

_He meets people on these walks. They're almost always older than him, and contrary to expectations, they're amiable, if tired. Sometimes it's a shopkeeper locking the door at closing hours, so lonely she brings a cup of cider and shares it with him, perched on her front step. Sometimes it's a homeless man inviting him to warm himself over an oilcan fire. Once it's even a child who says nothing but walks beside him, stepping lightly over every crack, so dirty and ragged he knows school isn't anywhere in her life._

_The wanderings are what alert him to the fact that the city is tired. It runs, it grows, it progresses; it stumbles, it falls, it exhausts itself. It struts like a superpower for an audience of none, and for all its sound and fury, it is slowly but surely coming undone. Kurt and the woman and the man and the child and all the shadowed faces he meets on the nighttime streets are simply the first casualties, the first to know. Fortunetellers, prophets of a sort, they watch the tapestry unravel while everyone else is caught up in praising its color -- but who are they to warn? Who would listen to a woman pawning artifacts to support herself, an orphan escaping the orphanage window at night, a young man with nightmares of a bullet in his breast?_

_"Thank you," Kurt says to the shopkeeper, and at one point brings along cider of his own so that she can save the precious spices she is so willing to share with a stranger. He gives the homeless man his own hat and smiles back at his yellow-toothed grin of delight. He brings the child a sandwich, apologizes for the lack of butter, and watches as she wolfs it down with grateful eyes._

_They must support each other so that they do not fall. It's all they have in a world determined to crush them beneath iron-studded boots._

\- - -

Kurt hugs his knees to his chest. He's been outside on the gentle slope of his backyard for hours. Waves of panic compete with frantic attempts to beat them back, but despite the turmoil and denial and silent pleas to any gods that exist, he runs his circles and returns to the same conclusion each and every time: If he wasn't dead before, he is now. It's certain. He has the rest of today, all of tonight, and in the morning, what he already knows will be confirmed in a white, wax-sealed envelope.

No -- two envelopes. One for him, one for Blaine.

Blaine's dying, too.

And he feels horrible and sour and heavy because of his knee-jerk reaction, how he shoved away the only person who cares about him and made him feel bad for something so simple and happy. He panicked, and the instincts honed by years spent on his toes kicked in for the worse.

_I hurt Blaine._

The words are rocks in his stomach.

If they have a week left to live, why is he still sitting here, fuming and frightened and alone? Why isn't he apologizing? He can see Blaine through the window, straight-backed as he pounds bread dough, shoulders straining at his T-shirt. Pride? Selfishness? Or has Kurt known Blaine through limited words for so long that he doesn't know how to talk to him now that they're limitless?

In the end, it is the rain that drives him inside. Warm and gentle, it taps its fingers on the covers of the books around him, and he jerks into action and hauls them under the overhang of the roof before the splashes of water do too much damage. He leaves the crate where it is. Let the neighbors see it and wonder.

He comes inside and closes the door behind him. Blaine pauses but doesn't turn around. Even from behind, Kurt can see the stiffness in his jaw.

"Blaine?" he asks quietly.

"... Kurt." His hands sink lightly into the dough.

"I'm sorry."

An inhale. "I know."

"I just -- I'm so _scared_ , Blaine," he admits, and the words tumble out without his permission. "This is how it started for my dad. He -- he ranted about how rotten he thought the city was, and the envelope was here the next morning, and I had to watch his last days slip away, and I was powerless to do anything, and I'm powerless now, but somehow it's even worse because it's my life at stake and yours, and I liked the kiss, okay, I did, I'm just scared --"

"Have you ever considered that maybe I'm scared too?" Blaine turns, and he's more hurt than angry, and his eyes are so bright. "I know we're going to die, Kurt. I fucking know. I knew it coming into the kiss and I knew it coming out, and _I did it anyways_. Because you matter to me. And I've told you already, I'll tell you again, I don't want a -- a long, deprived, useless life like every other person in this city! I want to be with you. I want to feel love. And I'm scared to hell of dying. I am! But -- but I know how to prioritize --"

"Prioritize? We're _dying_!" Suddenly Kurt is yelling, thrusting forward words while he slides backwards and away from everything that matters. "I can't just lay down and accept that! I'm not you, Blaine!"

"I'm not laying down, Kurt, I'm not giving up! I want to spend this -- this last week, my whole _life_ , with you, and that's fighting to the very end!" He bites his lip and then spits out like poison: "Or I wanted to. I'm not so sure anymore, now that you're -- you're --"

This hurts more than anything, and Kurt crumples backwards to sit on the table. _Oh, God._

Silence, and then Blaine says coldly, "I'm sorry I hurried along a death you seem to think you were destined for."

"Don't be," Kurt says flatly to hide the sting he feels in his throat. "You were trying to make me happy, after all. Or yourself. Which was it, Blaine?"

"Goddammit!" Blaine slams his hand through the dough, splitting it in the shape of a fist. "I don't know what I was doing, okay? It's summer, and we were reading amazing books, and you were there, and I thought you'd given up on this damn _denial_ , seeing as you've been in a secret relationship with me for _months_ and there were _illegal books in your backyard_ and _you dug them up in front of the camera_ , but oh, no, somehow you still think you were safe from the big bad white envelope until I sealed your fate with a fucking _kiss_! The city knows! They know about us! We aren't invisible! And I hate to say it, but you've pretty much been written into this end since you were five, from what you've told me!"

Shocked into silence, Kurt can only stare as Blaine closes h _is mouth and spins around to face the dough, kneading away the wound with unyielding hands. As much as he hates to admit it, what Blaine's saying makes sense. Have I been in denial? Am I unwilling to admit to myself that I'm the one to blame? Oh, God. I am the one to blame. For what's going to happen to me, if not also what's going to happen to Blaine... I gave him the note, I invited him here, I helped bury the books... Of course the city knows. Of course. If they didn't at first, they do now. What am I to them? A science experiment? Cheap entertainment, running in circles and beating on the walls of glass boxes and trying to love when I don't even know how?_

It pains him, the realization, the throb of the inability to force responsibility on someone else, but it loosens something inside of him, too. Breath comes easier as he unfolds his arms and grips the edge of the table. Sensitive to the sound, Blaine turns. His face is hard and his tone biting, but there's something behind it, Kurt knows, Kurt hopes. "Something to say?" he asks curtly.

Kurt closes his eyes. _If I started this, I might as well finish it._

"I love you."

The words and the tremble and the vulnerability are as unexpected to Blaine as the kiss in the backyard was to Kurt. Completely winded, he stares with his mouth half-open. "I -- what?"

Kurt steels himself and says it again, too loud, too fast. "I lo --"

"I love you, too."

Kurt surges forward, and it takes a moment, but Blaine's arms come up and hold him close. It is the safest Kurt has felt in his life. He melts, buries his face in the curve of Blaine's neck, inhales. "I love you --"

"Shh. I know, I know."

Kurt's voice shakes. Is he crying? He can't tell. "I'm sorry --"

"I know."

Blaine eases back against the counter and slides his arms down to Kurt's waist so he can rest their foreheads together. "I'm sorry, too," he whispers, and it isn't perfect, but it's a start. A start to something they can mend to completion in a week. Kurt closes his eyes and feels Blaine's hand brush his cheek, and he turns his head into the palm and kisses it, an apology stronger than words.

Maybe everything will be okay, after all.

\- - -

_Eventually, the nightmares crawl back to whatever hell that spawned them, and Kurt flushes the rest of the pills down the sink and stops roaming the city at night. It makes him a little guilty. After all, the fellow-sufferers he met beneath the waxen streetlights are likely still restless and unfulfilled; they have problems that don't fade with time, problems far more substantial than dreams. But he's so thankful to have honest sleep back that he rarely leaves at nighttime again. The taunts and the bullet and Santana Lopez condense into something small and cold that runs through him like a ripple at unexpected times. He ignores it. What's happened has happened, he tells himself, and soon the haggard, familiar, night-shadowed faces are as faded as the dreams._

_Someone new comes to work alongside him, bringing two bonuses: a split workload and someone to talk to; even though he's silent and grim-faced at first, he eventually lightens up, revealing a personality that better fills his big ears and near-constant look of sassiness. And he's in a wheelchair. It's difficult at first to have Mr. Abrams around, Kurt rolling his bucket of blue mop solution everywhere for him, but the man is clever and quick-thinking and soon works things out on his own. He fashions some sort of tie that attaches his supplies to his chair, leaving Kurt free to do his own job and talk to his new coworker. Ever courteous, he asks only skin-deep questions and doesn't inquire of Mr. Abrams's limp, useless legs, so undergrown they do not even touch the floor._

_He discovers that Mr. Abrams lives in Sylvester District, nearly as far from the law firm as can be. "It's because it's near one of the stops for the only bus with a ramp," he says casually, wiping splattered liquid from his glasses._

_"That must be hard," Kurt says, trying to imagine the stress of depending on something as simple as public transportation. If the bus broke down, he himself could probably make it to work on time, as long as he cut through a few backyards and side alleys. Mr. Abrams would be stranded. He does move fairly quickly, arms strong and sculpted from years of hauling himself around, but the terrain in Sylvester is notoriously rough._

_He shrugs. "I get by, man. I get by." Mop in one hand, he twists one wheel effortlessly, pivoting like it's no problem at all. "Life's kinder to some people than it is to others, and, well." He smiles. "It just hasn't been very kind to me."_

_It makes Kurt wonder if, for all his hardships, he really does have it better than most souls in the city. Sure, food's harder to come by than ever before; sure, he was the indirect cause of his dad's death; sure, he is lonely and aching in silence and a house too large for one average-sized man -- but he can walk. Haven't his midnight wanderings revealed to him the faces of orphans, the homeless, the lost ones, and everybody else the city shows no kindness towards?_

_One day, he can't help it. He's walking down the hallway behind the stately procession that is Mr. Abrams in his clunky but functional contraption of metal and fabric, and he suddenly blurts out, "What happened?" before he can stop himself._

_Mr. Abrams pauses and wheels himself around to face Kurt. His face is inscrutable._

_"I mean -- I mean to your legs," Kurt adds, making a bad situation worse._

_But Mr. Abrams just nods. "I know. Everyone asks eventually." He can only be Kurt's age or even younger, but he sounds old. "There was a crowd when I was six, fighting over an overturned cart of groceries or something, and I was in the way. I got pushed in front of a bus and run over. Partial paralysis and my legs were too mangled to grow correctly." He says it all in monotone, like the words have been worn smooth from years of repetition._

_Something in the story resounds with Kurt. He stays where he is, mind working furiously, even when Mr. Abrams sighs and turns around again. Then something clicks home, and he gasps, "You're Artie!"_

_"I -- what?" Mr. Abrams -- Artie -- swivels around again, incredulous. "How do you know my name?"_

_"My dad made your wheelchair!" Kurt explains, suddenly excited. He looks at the slender spokes of the wheels and remembers them throwing yellow light before his face as he sat in Burt's lap. "Burt Hummel! He told me about you."_

_Artie's face clears. "Really? Wow. You must be... Kurt, then? Funny how I still remember that." He laughs, a little dryly. "Probably because when my mom told me about the son of the guy making me a wheelchair for free, I was jealous beyond belief of his fully functional legs."_

_"I wouldn't say fully functional. I do still have some trouble with running into my coffee table." Immediately after speaking, Kurt winces._ Oh, crap. That was probably the worst thing I could say.

_But Artie just chuckles, unoffended. "Tell your dad thanks, would ya? Minor repairs have kept this puppy rollin' for fourteen years solid. Only a guy who really knows his stuff could pull that off."_

_"... Oh. Um." Kurt looks down. "I would, but... he died. Two years ago."_

_"Oh. I'm really sorry."_

_"No -- no, it's fine." Suddenly he recalls all the boundaries he is nearly overstepping: first names and familiarity and calling Burt his dad. He mentally scrambles to remember his place. "I'm managing well enough on my own."_

_"Same." Artie swallows and turns to roll down the hallway. Over his shoulder, he adds, "And it's all thanks to my wheels."_

\- - -

The damage has already been done; their lives have already been ruined; their seven-day last supper will soon begin -- and so that night, they sleep curled together in Kurt's bed. It's small, but the closeness is beautiful. Blaine fits himself to Kurt's warm back and settles an arm in the dip his waist like he's done so for years. There's heat Kurt's unaccustomed to, two bodies beneath a blanket, almost unbearable in the swelter of summer, and one of Blaine's legs bent between Kurt's, and stubble scratching teasingly on the back of his neck, and lips, warm and dry and lazy. Kurt falls asleep slowly in Blaine's embrace and the cadence of the breath that mingles with his own, a wordless assurance: I'm here. I'm here. I'm here.

Kurt wakes first. He rolls over, numb and sleep-mouthed and pleasantly tired, to face Blaine. The sun is a searchlight in his face. He presses his cheek against Blaine's shoulder instead, shielding himself. Isn't there something happening this morning that he was anxious about? Oh, yeah. Letters. Death letters. Dumb letters. Whatever. Blaine's T-shirt is rucked beneath his cheek; his smooth bare skin is warm and alive; he's sleeping, chest swelling against Kurt with every deep, easy breath, and he smells like sweat and summer and man, and nothing can touch Kurt in his fortress of sheets and sunlight and Blaine.

Not for now, at least.

Blaine wakes suddenly with a stir and an uneven breath. Kurt cracks an eye to see him bewildered for an instant before his gaze catches Kurt, nestled on his chest, and he smiles, sliding a loose hand into Kurt's bedhead. "Sleep well?" he asks through the gravel of morning.

"Of course." Kurt takes Blaine's wrist and brings it to his lips. Contentedness hums in his chest. "You?"

"Yeah. My arm's asleep." Blaine tugs it free from Kurt's weight and flexes his fingers. "You're heavier than you look."

"All muscle."

"Whatever you say." Blaine grins, pushes his fingers through Kurt's hair, stretches. Waking beside him is something precious, Kurt decides. There is a vulnerability, a newness that vanishes once he's gel-helmeted and dressed to face the day. "Ready to face the fire?"

"No. I'm not. I'll never be ready." Blaine's still stroking his hair, so the anxiety and fright are concentrated somewhere deep in Kurt's stomach, small enough to ignore. He curves his arm around Blaine's belly, bare and fine-haired where his shirt rode up. Maybe the lazy physical contact -- once so forbidden, now so available, everywhere, all at once -- is what anchors him to stability. Maybe the moment Blaine sits up and swings his feet over the side of the bed will be the moment Kurt drowns in a sea that's less water than sharks.

"Me neither," Blaine says quietly. "It's nothing we don't know already, though."

"But this makes it official."

"Right."

Silence, and then Kurt sits up, surprising himself. "Let's just get it over with."

"Are you --"

"I'm sure."

"It's early. How do we know they're even here yet?"

"They come at midnight, don't they?"

Blaine deflates. "I forgot."

"Hey." Kurt grabs his hand and pulls him upright. "We'll be fine."

Blaine stares at him until Kurt starts laughing. It's probably the pure, liquid fear in his veins manifesting itself, all the nervous energy released, but he can't stop. "Kurt," Blaine says, shaking his head slowly with a disbelieving grin, "we are going to be anything but fine."

"Come on." Kurt stands, tugs Blaine out of bed, and leads him downstairs. Windows full of light. Closets full of shadows. And, somewhere in-between, two men with real estate on Death Row, just inches out of denial, hand-in-hand, pajamaed, smiling.

Blaine's the one who stoops to pick up the two envelopes, overlapping like they fluttered through the mail slot like butterflies, still like they died the instant they hit the floor. Wordlessly, he gives Kurt his letter. Kurt smooths his thumb over the red wax seal. "It feels real," he says softly.

"It's real." Blaine takes a deep breath. "At the same time?" he asks. Kurt nods. They pop the seals in the same instant, other hands still laced like knots tied to the same anchor.

It says what he expects: _Kurt Elizabeth Hummel, you have received this notice on account of a crime..._ blah, blah, blah. He scans paragraphs of professional ramble and finds what matters. _After a week's grace period, you will be arrested and taken to court to be executed without trial, given the gravity of your offense. If, however, you use your grace period prudently, your sentence may be lessened._

Blaine's says the same. Reading it, he snorts softly, though his eyes are round and alert. "This is it, then," he says quietly.

"This is it."

And they are time bombs, the same way they've always been -- or Kurt's been, at least -- but now with hours and minutes and seconds printed on their skin, spiraling lower, out of control. Seven days. Kurt's heart pounds like a metronome, counting moments and breaths, and suddenly he is more alive than he ever remembers being: every nerve is feeling and every cell is humming and every hair is on end and he clutches Blaine's hand harder than he ever has before. Seven days. Seven days to live. Seven days to love. And then they will explode, fireworks seen only by the ones with hypodermic needles, appreciated by none.

_But isn't everyone counting down? We're all going to die someday. Blaine and I, we just have the curse -- or the privilege? -- of knowing exactly when._

They stand there for minutes, reading, rereading, until Blaine says, "Breakfast?" and Kurt says, "Yeah," and it feels surprisingly normal except for how the food tastes more vivid to Kurt than he remembers. Afterward, they haul the books inside. Another surprise: they weren't confiscated overnight.

"How nice. They left us reading material," Kurt comments dryly, and Blaine closes his mouth tight like he wants to smile but won't let himself. It puts Kurt in mind of an inappropriate joke at a funeral. He hugs the stack of hardcovers to his chest, kicks open the door, and sets them among the others, feeling chastened though Blaine didn't say anything. Is there even anything wrong with trying to lighten the mood? It's probably just his underlying nervousness that puts him so on edge. Blaine makes comments that are loose and easy, but Kurt's lungs crackle with jarred lightning as he flips through pages, cross-legged on his living room floor.

 _How did Dad manage this?_ he wonders as sweat suddenly bursts in his palms and bile in his mouth, the first of many distended waves of panic that fade fast and stain deep. _I feel like I could snap._ He gives a bite of a smile to Blaine's concerned look and closes the book. Clamping it tight in his hands, covers secure around pages as thin and flammable as he is, Kurt moves his thumbs over the indents of letters and swallows sudden, imminent vomit.

"Kurt? You look pale. Are you okay?"

"I'm fine." But he's not, and Blaine knows it, and Kurt knows it, and maybe, in a weird way, that helps. Maybe that sordid little joke is some semblance of comfort. They have had their hope taken from them. Their futures. The rest of their lives. What is there left to do but laugh?

There's no way in hell Kurt's going to work today. Or at all this week, probably. There are far more important things to do than pretend life continues as planned, after all, and the illusion of normalcy falls apart as they sit among books Kurt doesn't really want to read. Blaine, out of nowhere, says, "Did you ever imagine dying like this?"

"Please. Please, can we not talk about this." Not so much for his own fear, but because he's forced to wonder if his dad thought the same things. If Burt Hummel imagined. Kurt sets down the book he still hasn't reopened and rubs his eyelids with both hands.

"Fine. It's just, I didn't. It's weird because I thought about it a lot, but... never like this." Blaine says it quickly, like he's forcing the words out into the air to shrivel and die before they reach Kurt's ears.

But his interest is piqued. "You thought about dying a lot?" Kurt asks despite himself.

Blaine crawls across the floor and hoists himself into the armchair Kurt's back is against, nestling him between his calves, taking his shoulders and beginning to push them gently with the balls of his thumbs. "Sure. Doesn't everyone?" His hands are glorious on skin that feels entirely new, humming with enough energy to power the decades he won't be living. Kurt leans subtly forward to give him more to work with. "I hoped it would be old age, of course," Blaine muses. "Not rheumy, Alzheimer's old age -- no one wants to imagine themselves geriatric. But still old. Of course, I figured it would be another strict rationing that did me in, or something foul in that horrible tap water, or pneumonia in the winter. I never thought..." His voice trails.

"That you'd have a headstrong little sap dragging you into rebellion?" The words are bitter like pills swallowed too late.

"That I'd fall in love," Blaine says firmly, daring him to contradict. His hands are big and strong compared to the rest of him, and muscles made hard through years of pounding dough massage Kurt's back skillfully, thumbs rolling beneath his shoulder blades. "That I'd have a countdown. A precise amount of sand in my hourglass. No, shh, don't say anything -- about your apology or that slightly cheesy thing I just said."

"It was more than slightly cheesy," Kurt interjects, tipping his head back to see Blaine, "but I suppose you noticing at all is a step up."

"No interruptions." Blaine whacks his temple lightly. "And you know what? I think I like this way more."

Kurt views him upside-down, taking in the curve of his lips, his amber eyes -- calm but also somber, too somber for Blaine, whose easy grin and short stature speak of innate lightness and cheer. "Burst-of-fire guy, are you?" he asks, humming appreciation as Blaine's fingertips find a rose of tension and knead it away. The coldness in his stomach is melting, pushed aside, at least for now.

"Die-knowing-what-it's-like-to-be-in-love guy, actually," Blaine answers. He dips his head down and kisses Kurt, heated and unhurried. All these months of calculated distance first and wild abandon later, one fight and many conversations deeper than notes, and Kurt still feels a spark, a pinpoint of something hot and glowing in his stomach. It combats the undulating knots of anxiety. It soothes him to the rhythm of the hands cupping his shoulders. It's more than a lip between his, a chin bumping his nose -- it's Blaine.

Blaine, who'd rather die with Kurt than live without him.

Desperation, rough like sandpaper, surges up and takes hold, and it isn't the desperation of the approaching end but that of the need to make a hundred new beginnings before they fall. He pulls back and turns around, eases himself up to perch on the chair's arm, high enough to touch his nose to the gel-dark crown of Blaine's head. "You're really willing," he says, half-question, half-truth, wondering.

"I think I am. I don't know. I'm twenty. There might be a million billion things out there for me to live for. There are, actually. But I've only experienced a handful, and one of them is sitting on the side of this chair with his legs in my lap and asking pointless questions, and he's better than all the rest. So good, I might be fine with dying."

"You're not fine."

"I'm not." Who could ever be fine with dying? But maybe it is possible to share the burden with someone. Maybe, split between two souls who knew each other before breath or birth, there can be acceptance. Maybe.

Kurt's gut still rolls like a barrel on the deck of a ship bound for shipwreck, so maybe not. Maybe only time will tell. And it's not like they have much of that.

"I love you," he says.

And the reply. No hesitation. No doubt. "I love you, too."

Kurt's always kind of been a bang-of-fire guy himself. He takes a deep breath. "How about we leave a little bit of a mark before we go?"

\- - -

_Kurt wouldn't call he and Artie friends, exactly, because that's such a dangerous and dubious term to use these days. Friends are okay, supposedly; it's just best not to get too attached. But Kurt's probably closer to Artie than he is anyone else in the city of strangers. That might just be because of what ties him to Burt, the wheelchair built by his father's hands. Either way, though, he's thankful for the quiet companionship and Artie's dry but non-inflammatory remarks. He's a careful man, Artie -- never oversteps, never rubs anyone the wrong way. Kurt gets the sense that sometimes he wants to._

_It's this calm outward passivity and the sudden famine that ultimately do him in._

_The abrupt shortage isn't all that unusual. They've had a rough summer, sweltering and parched, and the city grows and manufactures much of its own food, hauling in crops from its eastern outposts. Trade is strictly limited and almost entirely between cities with similar policies, cities Kurt has heard of only vaguely -- there are rumors of rebel settlements with better, more abundant food, but their entire premise is built on secrecy. It's not like this city or any other would do business with threats, anyways. So famines come and last years and go again; ration systems are enacted and modified to suit the current depletion; Kurt gets by on only slightly less food than usual, belt already set to the tightest notch. He has felt the bite for so long that he is numb to its teeth sinking deeper._

_But it appears he is among the lucky in this respect. Artie worries quietly but clearly about the decreasing supplies, the strict rations, on a regular basis. They compare the food credits they get and discover Artie had significantly fewer than Kurt. "I don't know what I'll do if they cut me off completely," he confesses one day as they stack supplies into the closet._

_Kurt unhooks the strap on Artie's wheelchair from around his bucket and nudges it in with his toe. "Why would they do that?" he asks, only half-listening._

_"I'm in wheels, man. I'm a liability. An inconvenience. Can't do useful work, can't serve in the nation's army if we go to war again, can't even go to the grocery store by myself..."_

_They turn to make their way to the elevator. "But they wouldn't -- surely they wouldn't just stop allowing you food?"_

_"If I had the intention of making a city a superentity, I'd cut the cripples, too." He's always talked about himself this way. Offhand. Callous. Kurt can only wonder at what's happened in his past to put him in this mindset. He seems dulled, almost, the wryness less than it could be, the comments sharp but not lacerating. There was once fight in Artie Abrams. Kurt suspects it was stolen from him by a speeding bus or by the events which followed it._

_"That's cold-blooded murder," he argues, halfway into shock._

_Artie abruptly stops wheeling, turns his entire chair towards Kurt, and stares at him._

_"Oh. Yeah. I -- I didn't think." Kurt's mouth tastes cold and sour. He'll probably get yet another printed warning for that slip of tongue, but there are bigger problems at hand. "They took my dad," he says quietly. "I don't know why I didn't think they would do that, too. I'm sorry."_

_"It's fine." Artie smiles oddly. When he turns around again, Kurt catches the hollow sag of his cheeks and sees he is already thinner than when they first met. His sweatervest dangles from his shoulders, his hands show bones like folds in cloth, and as he eases himself down the hallway, to Kurt he is suddenly very, very small._

\- - -

Kurt's first idea involves the cans of white paint stacked in his garage, remnants from when Burt did odd jobs on top of working at the mechanics shop because money was so tight. They wait until the bakery's closing hours, haul the paint down, pop the lids, and decorate the building's face like inspired artists on a canvas. It's new and giddying, the thrill of public disobedience. There's no one there to see, and even if there was, what would they do? Report them? It's not like they're not being punished already. So Kurt quells his nervous giggles, loads the square-tipped brush with paint the color of eggshells, and writes "KH + BA" in sweeping strokes as Blaine, beside him, draws dozens of hearts. _Probably not graffiti of the conventional kind,_ Kurt thinks, _but fitting, somehow._

Blaine pauses, considers the blank wall, and writes _Fuck the city_ as large as he can. He looks up to see Kurt's slack jaw and grins. "I got carried away."

 _Fuck the city. Fuck the rules. Fuck the cameras._ Over and over again, they desecrate the building where they met -- a poetic finality. Kurt drags over a trash can to empty, overturn, and stand on in order to reach the bricks above the windows. Paint runs down his wrists and elbows and stains the sleeves of his jacket. He itches his forehead with a knuckle and leaves a streak of white behind. Below him, Blaine smears disobedience on his cheekbones and neck like war paint, and he glows in the moonlight, white paint and white shirt and a white smile of elated disbelief, as he brings the brush to the wall and writes, Fuck all of you.

Finished, they tip the cans on their sides to run sticky into the gutter, prop the brushes neatly against the wall, and walk home hand in hand. The paint turns to glue and hardens and seals them together; the stars are out among smudges of cloud. It's a beautiful night to breathe deep and blink slow and paint curses on the side of a building. It's a beautiful night to be alive.

\- - -

_One day Artie is there -- painfully skinny, pale as paper, but there -- and the next, he isn't._

_Kurt's stomach growls in such distress that he's more or less distracted from wonder and worry until around noon. Artie still hasn't shown up. He could just be sick, of course -- many people have felt weak and under the weather thanks to the restrictions; Kurt's felt that way himself -- and that's what Kurt assures himself is the problem with Artie as he scrubs scuff marks from the walls that are technically his coworker's domain, though he's still uneasy. Artie is so steadfast, so determined in every venue. It would have to be a fairly stringent sickness to keep him home from work._

_"If I had the intention of making a city a superentity, I'd cut the cripples, too." The words have haunted Kurt in the weeks since Artie spoke them, and they haunt him now._

_Someone spits on the floor as he walks by. Kurt stares at the saliva, then spins around and glares hot and vicious at the perpetrator. "What the hell was that for?" he snaps. It surprises even him._

_The man turns, aghast. Kurt knows neither his face nor name; apparently the man doesn't know Kurt's either. "I'm sorry?" he asks coolly, tone making evident that he is anything but._

_"I just cleaned that." All the tension, the worry, the consistent gnawing in his stomach -- it's doused in anger and making him tremble. "I work here too, you know, and I have to deal with that kind of crap so you and your suited cohorts have a pretty place to push your papers. The least you could do is show some respect."_

_Kurt's worked here over a year and this is the first time he's ever spoken to an employee this way._

_"I'm keeping you in a job," the man says, cold and effortless and every word stinging. "You and your mangled friend. If there weren't messes, there'd be nothing for the janitors" -- he flicks a derogatory glance at Kurt's elbow-length rubber gloves -- "to clean, and no income with which they could fill their stomachs. You should be thanking me."_

_He's sneering as he inclines his head to a fuming Kurt and leaves. Kurt seethes, chest heaving, and storms away as soon as he's around the corner. Like hell is he cleaning that glob off the floor. Let the bastard step in it tomorrow. The incident digs into his mind for the rest of the day, vying for preoccupation with his ravenous hunger, and he forgets the whole where the squeaks and squeals of Artie's chair should be until the next day, because once again, Artie is gone._

\- - -

No letters greet them the morning after, no shortened grace period or more painful death. It seems safe to assume they can do whatever they please for the next six days; death appears to be the worst punishment at the city's disposal, and they've already got that stain in their ledgers.

Kurt smells Blaine on his skin and beside him, peeling an apple with his teeth. "I wonder if they've already painted over what we did," Blaine muses. "They've always been quick to cover their mistakes."

"Probably." Kurt sighs heavily. "Kind of humbling," he says softly, "to think that they'll so easily remove us from the city, isn't it? We've spent twenty-plus years here, and just like that..." He snaps his fingers. "Our records gone, our possessions burned, our house sold to some oblivious citizen, everybody who knew us forgetting our names..."

"It makes you wonder how many there were before us." Kurt looks up sharply. Blaine takes a crescent-moon bite of the apple, eyebrows raised. "Haven't you ever wondered? I mean, if they can delete whole lives almost effortlessly, there _have_ to be others. Or have to have been, at least. People like us, too smart or in love to be brainwashed, who were killed and obliterated or else escaped. Don't you think? And who else would fuel the rebel settlements?"

"I don't know. I guess I always felt so alone that I thought I was the only one. And the rebel settlements are just a rumor," Kurt reminds him. "You can't believe everything you hear."

"But wouldn't it be amazing if what we hear about those is true?" Obviously wistful, Blaine boosts himself onto the kitchen counter and tosses an orange at Kurt, knowing without asking that his boyfriend is hungry. It makes Kurt smile. "Just imagine." He's so earnest. "Hundreds of people like you and me in a tiny town by a -- by a river somewhere, or a lake or something. Maybe a deserted city. A place without electricity, but without cameras as well. A place where love, with all its inevitable melancholy, mess, and inconvenience, is allowed." He shakes his half-eaten apple to illustrate his point.

Grinning, Kurt digs his thumbs into the orange and shells it. "You're poetic when you're hungry."

"It's all your cursed books. I talk like a brother Grimm."

 _They'll burn the books, too,_ Kurt realizes, and a small chasm of sorrow opens inside him. He splits the peel of the orange and finds a sphere of segments shaped like smiles. They're more acidic than sweet, but he eats them anyways, swallowing the tearlike sting while Blaine looks on in silence.

"We won't be completely erased, you know," Blaine offers quietly, setting down the apple core and taking Kurt's hands. "If they cremate us, we'll be ash and atoms, circulating into dust particles in people's homes and lungs. Maybe you'll cause someone with asthma to die."

Kurt snorts, fingertips curling into Blaine's pulse, hidden beneath the thin skin of his wrists. "What a desirable legacy, you dork."

Blaine just smiles and tugs him closer. "And whether they burn our bodies or leave them to rot in cheap coffins, stacked among the others like so many sardines --"

"That's it, I'm cutting you off from the storybooks --"

"-- you'll still be here." Blaine touches their joined hands to the countertop. "And here." He gestures to the air. "Everywhere in this city are cameras that saw you, sidewalks that knew the weight of your step, breaths that passed between your princely lips."

Kurt rolls his eyes, although he can't keep from grinning. "Long live Kurt Hummel."

"He will." Kurt closes his eyes in anticipation of the kiss even before Blaine's lips brush his forehead. "And his faithful paramour?"

"The same. Lovers even in their dreams of death."

"See, you're catching on."

That evening, Kurt remembers from the blue another secret that slumbers where his dad put it to rest, years ago. He leaves Blaine making cookies and returns minutes later with two heavy, dim-glass bottles cradled in his arms, slopping dark liquid inside their shells. Blaine stares. "Your garage has more treasure than any of the pirates I've read about recently, and believe me, I've read about a lot." There's a book propped open against a can of brown sugar, its pages dusted with floury fingerprints.

Kurt takes a clump from the canister and dodges when Blaine tries to swat it from him. "Hey now, don't make me drop these!" He sets them reverently among the loose sugar and flour on the counter. The labels are missing, and they're coated in dust, but the corks are in place and sealed. Alcohol, too, has been banned from the city -- it has many of the same effects as does love: rowdiness, poorly made decisions, irrationality, sex, passion -- and, according to a stilted conversation with Burt, folks reacted to that prohibition just as vehemently as they did to the gradual banning of love. "You know," he muses, "we could sell these for a fortune on the black market."

"And use the money to do what? Bribe a gate guard?"

"Nah, they're too loyal." Kurt fingers the foil on the bottles' necks. "To hell with it all. Let's drink 'em."

"I was starting to think you'd never say that."

Prudently, they wait until the last batch of cookies is cooling on its tray before trying the wine straight from the bottle. Kurt's nose wrinkles. It's more sour than he expected, rich in a confusing way, vaguely fruity, cool and flirty on his tongue but warm and thick in his throat. "People loved this stuff?"

"Let me try." Blaine holds the neck of the bottle and takes a mouthful. He swirls it around meditatively, then swallows and says, "Well, it's not terrible. I kind of like it, actually."

"Hmm. Let me try another sip."

Another sip turns into another swig turns into heartbeats-long swallows of wine, and without ever noticing a turning point, Kurt finds himself liking the flavor, the slow slide down his throat, the staticky fuzz of pleasure and warmth. He drops to the floor because it's easier than standing and tugs Blaine's hand lightly. Usually that wouldn't be enough to even sway him, but now he unbalances, totters, and collapses. It makes sense to curl up close to him, to let him life the cold round mouth of the bottle to Kurt's own lips, to drink the last trickles without lifting his head from Blaine's shoulder. It makes sense to just look at Blaine without speaking, gazing at first his sticky lips and then his hazy, sparkling eyes, until they both giggle themselves breathless. It makes sense to struggle with the cork in the other bottle until it pops free and they can make themselves even warmer and looser and happier. Everything makes sense. Kurt can't remember his problems and everything makes sense.

They talk, and the words come somehow easier than ever before, falling from Kurt's lips before he can stop them like they're slippery with soap. Blaine rubs Kurt's back with a heavy hand as he talks and noses into his hair, inhaling. When Blaine speaks, it's slow and jumbled, and that's funny, and it's not until Kurt stops laughing that they manage a halfway intelligible conversation. Five minutes later, Kurt can't really remember what they talked about. That doesn't matter, though. What matters is the raw honesty in Blaine's voice, all barriers stripped away by drink, and the way Kurt's pulse surges with the spikes of emotion as he speaks, and the breath on Kurt's forehead that smells like the sweetness of the inside of his mouth, and the way they are linked, head on shoulder, hand in hand, vulnerability brushing helpless vulnerability.

When all the wine is gone, they eat cookies until Kurt nearly falls asleep, and the stairs look too tricky tonight, so Blaine suggests in shorter words than usual that they just spend the night here. On the kitchen floor. Kurt thinks that's a marvelous idea and says so before standing and making his way to the living room, stumbling and gripping furniture for support like a seasick sailor in a storm, to uproot a couch cushion and bring it back. Blaine uses it as a pillow, and Kurt uses Blaine's stomach as a pillow, even though it's hard to fall asleep because he giggles whenever Blaine's belly jumps with a hiccup. But he feels warm and loose and heavy and wonderfully, boundlessly, blissfully happy, and he dozes off in minutes, the barrel of one sleek glass bottle clutched limply in his hand.

\- - -

_Missing one day is rare. Missing two is unheard of, and for most of them, unaffordable, especially now. The ration system hinges on the quantity of your work; the card in Kurt's wallet that he shows to the cashier at the grocery store shows him working six days out of seven, which qualifies him for more food than most. At least, that's how the system's supposed to work. Artie, too, works almost the whole week, but he's certified for just over half the food Kurt receives._

_How cunning to kill someone that way, Kurt thinks with a leaden stomach, though Artie isn't dead, he can't be dead, he can't. Gradual, subtle, can't be traced to any specific source... Oh, God, I hope he's okay._

_He's the closest thing Kurt's had to a friend since his father died. Artie, with the wheels that hinder him, the wheels he flaunts anyways. Artie, dry and witty, something inside him made dull, something else made sharp and whip-smart. Artie, steadfast and steady, never whining, never complaining; Artie, twirling the mop with a flourish as he wheels himself down the hallway one-handed, as though scorning the glances of pity and disgust thrown his way._

_No, Artie can't be dead._

_Three days later, Kurt's boss, whom he knows only vaguely, sees him in the hallway and motions him over to say casually, "Your coworker, Mr. Abraham, is dead."_

_Kurt has to hold the wall for support. "His name is Mr. Abrams -- I -- what?"_

_"Abrams, Abraham, close enough." Entirely unaffected, his boss frowns at a smudge Kurt hasn't gotten around to removing and smears it around a little with his sleeve. "I do expect you to pick up his slack."_

_"But -- but what happened to him?"_

_The man looks at him, startled, Kurt notes sourly, at his concern. "I only got the call from the hospital this morning. I --"_

_"You didn't_ ask _?!"_

_"They didn't tell me." He shrugs, uncomfortable. "I didn't think --"_

_"But he worked for you." The man stares, mouth slack and hand still propped against the dirty spot on the wall, as Kurt grips the broom so tightly that splinters burrow into his skin. "Don't you care? Don't -- don't you even know his first name?"_

_The man shifts. "I... can't say that I do."_

_"Don't you care?" Kurt repeats in disbelief._

_"It isn't my place to care, Mr. Hummel." His boss relaxes, a gentle, condescending smile falling into place, like he's teaching a lesson to an ignorant child. "My purpose in this company is to push it further along the path to success. This city is a hive of progress; we must remain on our feet if we wish to keep our place in it. I think of the welfare of the citizens as a whole, rather than that of one person out of many -- and you would do well to do the same." Kurt stares. "Think of this, Mr. Hummel: did Mr. Abraham -- Mr. Abrams assist our company in growth, or did he drag it down? You worked alongside him, yes?" The look in the man's eyes suggests he has better things to do than discuss such trivial matters with the janitor, but does so out of the goodness of his heart. "His wheelchair, his... physical instability. Did it help or hurt?"_

_Artie spinning the mop as he levered it over his shoulder to dunk it in the bucket attached to his chair. Artie looking both ways quickly before casting a mischievous look at Kurt and suddenly flying down an empty hallway, banking sharply at its end, spinning, grinning, then cleaning off the black scuff marks he created. Artie wheeling forward to catch a closing door with the rim of a tire so Kurt doesn't have to drop his supplies to open it again._

_Kurt looks his boss in the eye and says, "He helped more than you will ever know."_

_Taken aback, the man shrugs and says, "Well, I'd have thought..." Shrugging, he turns to go. "Too late now. Good day, Mr. Hummel."_

_Kurt doesn't return the benediction, and thirty seconds later, his hands begin to tremble._

 


End file.
